Irina Cristea is an Associate Professor at the University of Nova Gorica, Slovenia, where she leads the Centre of Information Technologies and Applied Mathematics. She holds a PhD in Mathematics from Ovidius University of Constanța, Romania, and completed her postdoctoral studies at the University of Udine, Italy. Her research is mainly focused on hypercompositional algebra. She has published more than 80 research papers in journals indexed by Scopus and Web of Science and is co-author of the book Fuzzy Algebraic Hyperstructures: An Introduction, published by Springer in 2015. Prof. Cristea is also actively involved in the international academic community. In recent years, she has served as Chief Editor of the Italian Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics and as an Associate Editor for journals such as Mathematics (MDPI), Heliyon Mathematics (Cell Press), and Open Mathematics (De Gruyter Brill), as well as several other international journals. She has also co-edited four books published by MDPI. Her academic experience includes international doctoral supervision and examination. She supervised a completed PhD at the University of Montenegro in 2022 and is currently supervising three doctoral students and participates in external doctoral examinations.