Professor Imre J. Rudas Rector/President Budapest Tech Becsi ut 96/B H-1034, Budapest Hungary E-mail: rudas@bmf.hu	Professor Rudas Imre Rektor Budapesti Muszaki Foiskola 1034 Budapest Becsi ut 96/B Hungary

Abstract: One of the most important and central problems of fuzzy set theory has been the proper definition of set-theoretic (or logical) operations. From the beginning of the theory, the 'min' for intersection and 'max' for union is very common and popular in the literature. This is due to the fact that they have several nice properties and are easy to work with, especially in the applications. It turned out that the justification of a class of operations - instead of any particular one - for extending crisp intersection (union and complementation) is more reasonable.
This recognition has lead researchers to the definition of t-norms, t-conorms and strong negations. Generally speaking, these connectives possess reasonable properties. But t-norms, t-conorms and strong negations can also be interpreted as many-valued extensions of the usual Boolean logical connectives conjunction, disjunction and negation, respectively. Thus it is natural that their properties have to be connected and be in accordance with that of fuzzy implications. On the other hand, if we work with binary operations and there is no need to extend them for three or more arguments then associativity is a very restrictive and unnecessary condition. In addition, the two variables in the connective may have different semantics, whence the commutativity property may also be questionable. It has also become clear that these operators do not always follow the real phenomena and do not provide optimal performance.
These facts are very often left out of consideration. Therefore, there is a natural need for finding new operators to develop more sophisticated intelligent systems.
This paper summarizes the research results of the authors that have been carried out in recent years on generalization of conventional aggregation operators. This includes, but is not limited to, the class of uninorms and nullnorms, absorbing norms, distance- and entropy-based operators, quasi-conjunctions and extended means.

Brief Biography of the Speakers:
Imre J. Rudas graduated from Banki Donat Polytechnic, Budapest in 1971, received the Master Degree in Mathematics from the Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, the Ph.D. in Robotics from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1987, while the Doctor of Science degree from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 2004. He received his first Doctor Honoris Causa degree from the Technical University of Kosice, Slovakia and the second one from “Polytechnica” University of Timisoara, Romania.
He served as the Rector of Budapest Tech from August 1, 2003 for a period of four years, and was reelected for five years in 2007. He is active as a full university professor and Head of Department of Intelligent Engineering Systems.
He is a Fellow of IEEE, Senior Administrative Committee member of IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, member of Board of Governors of IEEE SMC Society, Chairman of the Hungarian Chapters of IEEE Computational Intelligence and IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Societies, and Vice-chair of IEEE Hungary Section.
He is the Vice-President of IFSA (International Fuzzy System Association), he was the President of Hungarian Fuzzy Association for ten years, President of IEEE Hungary Section.
He serves as an associate editor of some scientific journals, including IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, member of editorial board of Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence, member of various national and international scientific committees. He is the founder of the IEEE International Conference Series on Intelligent Engineering Systems (INES) and IEEE International Conference on Computational Cybernetics (ICCC), and some regional symposia. He has served as General Chairman and Program Chairman of numerous scientific international conferences.
His present areas of research activity are Computational Cybernetics, Robotics with special emphasis on Robot Control, Soft Computing, Computed-aided Process Planning, Fuzzy Control and Fuzzy Sets. He has published books, more than 400 papers in books, various scientific journals and international conference proceedings.

Janos Fodor is full professor in the Institute of Intelligent Engineering Systems, at the John von Neumann Faculty of Informatics of Budapest Tech, Budapest, Hungary. He has been Vice Rector for Science at Budapest Tech since 2005.
He received his Master Degree in Mathematics in 1981, and his Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1984 from the Eφtvφs Lorand University, Budapest. He received his C.Sc. degree from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1991, and also the Dr. Habil. degree in 2000, the latter from the Eφtvφs Lorand University. He is Doctor of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
He has been pursuing research in mathematical foundations of fuzzy logic, computational intelligence, preference modelling, inference and decision making since 1987. He is co-author of two monographs published by Kluwer and by Springer, and of over 180 publications. He has been presented papers at more than 100 international and domestic conferences. He has been delivered numerous plenary and invited talks, and acted as General Chairman and Program Committee Chair or Member at diverse scientific international conferences.
He is Area Editor of Fuzzy Sets and Systems, member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the International Journal of Advanced Intelligence Paradigms, editor of the European Journal of Operational Research, Computing and Informatics, Surveys in Mathematics and its Applications, Acta Mechanica Slovaca, Buletin Automatica, president of the Hungarian Fuzzy Association, and coordinator of the EUROFUSE EURO Working Group on Fuzzy Sets. He has been a coordinator of several research projects. He has been Invited Professor at various universities in Belgium, Italy, France and Spain.