Valentina Zharkova is Chair of Applied Mathematics at the Department of Mathematics and Computing, University of Bradford, UK. Having obtained her M.Sc. degree from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kiev (NUK), Ukraine, and her Ph.D. degree from the Main Astronomical Observatory of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, she worked for NUK for 20 years. In 1992, she moved to the University of Glasgow as a Royal Society Research Fellow and in 2000 to the University of Bradford. She authored over 200 scientific publications including the key one in Nature (issue 6683, 1998) on the discovery of solar quakes, which was covered by media worldwide. Professor Zharkova is a member of the Royal Astronomical Society, the International Astronomical Union, the European Physical Society and of the Editorial Board of the Journal on Knowledge-based Engineering Systems (KES).