Andrea Schaerf received his PhD in Computer Science from University of Rome "La Sapienza" in 1994. From 1996 to 1998 he has been Assistant Professor at University of Rome "La Sapienza". From 1998 to 2005 he has been Associate Professor at University of Udine, where, since 2005, he is Full Professor. From 2015 to 2021 he has been the Head of the School in Management Engineering. He has been Program Chair of the following conferences: 11th International Conference on the Practice and Theory of Automated Timetabling (PATAT 2016), Udine (Italy), August 23-26 2016; 9th Metaheuristic International Conference (MIC 2011), Udine (Italy), July 25-28 2011; and 6th International Workshop on Hybrid Metaheuristics (HM-2009), Udine (Italy), October 16-17 2009. He is in the editorial board of International Transactions in Operational Research and Journal of Scheduling. He has been Plenary Speaker at the 13th International Conference on the Practice and Theory of Automated Timetabling (PATAT-2022), Leuven, Belgium, Tue 30 Aug 2022 - Fri 2 Sep 2022; speaker at the 1st International Metaheuristics Summer School (MESS-2018), Acireale Italy, 21 - 25 July, 2018; and invited Speaker at the 27th Annual Conference of the Belgian Operations Research Society (ORBEL 27), Kortrijk Belgium, 7 - 8 February, 2013. His main research interests are: Scheduling and Timetabling Problems, Local Search & Metaheuristics for Combinatorial Problems, and Problem Specification Languages and Tools.