<div dir="ltr"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:115%;font-size:12pt;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif">Dear Colleague,</p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:115%;font-size:12pt;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif">We are organizing a Special Session for the International
Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN 2026) entitled <b>“Advances in
Machine Learning and Deep Learning for Hyperspectral Image Classification,”</b>
which is part of the IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI)
2026, to be held in Maastricht, the Netherlands, June 21–26, 2026.</p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:115%;font-size:12pt;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif">The objective of this special session is to bring together
researchers and practitioners in machine learning, deep learning, and remote
sensing to share novel computational approaches for hyperspectral image
classification.</p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:115%;font-size:12pt;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif">Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the
following:</p>

<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;line-height:115%;font-size:12pt;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Symbol">·<span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-kerning:auto;font-feature-settings:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman"">        
</span></span>Remote Sensing Applications of Hyperspectral
Imaging</p>

<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;line-height:115%;font-size:12pt;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Symbol">·<span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-kerning:auto;font-feature-settings:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman"">        
</span></span>Hyperspectral Imaging for Advanced Remote
Sensing Techniques</p>

<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;line-height:115%;font-size:12pt;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Symbol">·<span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-kerning:auto;font-feature-settings:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman"">        
</span></span>Deep Learning Architectures for Hyperspectral
Image Classification</p>

<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;line-height:115%;font-size:12pt;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Symbol">·<span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-kerning:auto;font-feature-settings:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman"">        
</span></span>Transfer Learning for Hyperspectral Image
Classification</p>

<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;line-height:115%;font-size:12pt;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Symbol">·<span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-kerning:auto;font-feature-settings:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman"">        
</span></span>Unsupervised and Semi-Supervised Learning
Methods</p>

<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;line-height:115%;font-size:12pt;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Symbol">·<span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-kerning:auto;font-feature-settings:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman"">        
</span></span>Data Augmentation and Synthetic Data Generation
for Hyperspectral Data</p>

<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;line-height:115%;font-size:12pt;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Symbol">·<span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-kerning:auto;font-feature-settings:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman"">        
</span></span>Multisource and Multimodal Data Fusion</p>

<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;line-height:115%;font-size:12pt;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Symbol">·<span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-kerning:auto;font-feature-settings:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman"">        
</span></span>Explainability and Interpretability in
Hyperspectral Image Classification</p>

<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;line-height:115%;font-size:12pt;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Symbol">·<span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-kerning:auto;font-feature-settings:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman"">        
</span></span>Advanced Feature Extraction Techniques</p>

<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;line-height:115%;font-size:12pt;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Symbol">·<span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-kerning:auto;font-feature-settings:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman"">        
</span></span>Adversarial Attacks and Robustness in
Hyperspectral Image Classification</p>

<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;line-height:115%;font-size:12pt;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Symbol">·<span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-kerning:auto;font-feature-settings:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman"">        
</span></span>Real-Time Hyperspectral Image Classification</p>

<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;line-height:115%;font-size:12pt;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Symbol">·<span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-kerning:auto;font-feature-settings:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman"">        
</span></span>Applications of Hyperspectral Image
Classification</p>

<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;line-height:115%;font-size:12pt;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Symbol">·<span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-kerning:auto;font-feature-settings:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman"">        
</span></span>Benchmarking and Evaluation of Deep Learning
Models</p>

<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;line-height:115%;font-size:12pt;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Symbol">·<span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-kerning:auto;font-feature-settings:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman"">        
</span></span>Hybrid and Ensemble Models for Hyperspectral
Classification</p>

<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;line-height:115%;font-size:12pt;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Symbol">·<span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-kerning:auto;font-feature-settings:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman"">        
</span></span>Hyperparameter Tuning and Optimization
Techniques</p>

<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt 0.5in;line-height:115%;font-size:12pt;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Symbol">·<span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-kerning:auto;font-feature-settings:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman"">        
</span></span>Challenges and Future Directions in
Hyperspectral Image Classification</p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:115%;font-size:12pt;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif">Details about the session can be found <a style="color:rgb(70,120,134);text-decoration-line:underline">here: https://sites.google.com/view/wcci2026/home</a></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:115%;font-size:12pt;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif">Information on papers submission can be found here: <a href="https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fattend.ieee.org%2Fwcci-2026%2Finformation-for-authors%2F&data=05%7C02%7Cnzhang%40udc.edu%7C5b42e5db0518450966a308de22a454a3%7Ca31211ef14214193bf151d613b2546f2%7C0%7C0%7C638986286376136351%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=EXW4tqEXisR6OpkMpS1ytSeZp%2FDTYO4K3EvZBJmm4dk%3D&reserved=0" target="_blank" title="Original URL: https://attend.ieee.org/wcci-2026/information-for-authors/. Click or tap if you trust this link." style="color:rgb(70,120,134)">https://attend.ieee.org/wcci-2026/information-for-authors/</a> </p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:115%;font-size:12pt;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif">All accepted papers will be included in the WCCI 2026
proceedings, published on the IEEE Xplore Digital Library.<span style="font-size:12pt"> </span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:115%;font-size:12pt;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif">The deadline for the submission of papers is approaching:
January 31, 2026, 23:59 AoE time (no extension will be given, see <a href="https://attend.ieee.org/wcci-2026/important-dates-deadlines/" style="color:rgb(70,120,134)">Important
Dates</a>) </p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:115%;font-size:12pt;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif">For any additional inquiries, please feel free to contact
us.</p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:115%;font-size:12pt;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif">Best regards,</p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:115%;font-size:12pt;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif">Nian Ashlee Zhang, University of the District of Columbia,
USA<br>
Man-Fai Leung, Anglia Ruskin University, U.K.<br>
Feng Xia, RMIT University, Australia<br>
Donald C. Wunsch II, Missouri University of Science and Technology, USA</p></div>