biography error in IEEE access template

Question

I am using IEEE access template downloaded from here. I am adding authors biography in my paper using the following syntax-

\begin{IEEEbiographynophoto}{author_name} (S'18) bla bla bla
\end{IEEEbiographynophoto}

However, I am incurring with following error-

Missing \endcsname inserted.

<to be read again> 
                   \unhbox 
l.33 ... author_name}{biography.0\c@biography }
                                                  % 33
The control sequence marked <to be read again> should
not appear between \csname and \endcsname.

! Missing \endcsname inserted.
<to be read again> 
                   \unhbox 
l.33 ... author_name}{biography.0\c@biography }
                                                  % 33
The control sequence marked <to be read again> should
not appear between \csname and \endcsname.

From my understanding, I think something is wrong with the ieeeaccess.cls file but not sure what it is. Please let me know, what can I do to fix the problem.

Answer 1

Here is what I did. I defined a new environment and copied the definition of the IEEEbiographynophoto environment in that.

\newenvironment{IEEEbiographynophotoAlt}[1]{%
\normalfont\biographyfont\interlinepenalty500%
\vskip 4\baselineskip plus 1fil minus 0\baselineskip%
\parskip=0pt\par%
\noindent{\biographyheadfont\uppercase{#1}\ }}{\relax\par\normalfont}

Answer 2

The IEEE Access Template comes with two .cls files IEEEtran and ieeeaccess. Your question suggests that you are using the ieeeaccess. In my document, I work with the IEEEtran.cls instead and have not encountered any problem with adding author biographies. Initially, I used the ieeeaccess, but latex flagged it to be invalid so I switched to IEEEtran. Also, when using the ieeeaccess.cls, my references were not loading as expected. I equally observed that the ieeeaccess loads IEEEtrans at the beginning of the file. This may suggest that IEEEtrans is superior to ieeeaccess. However, I suggest you use the IEEEtrans instead and adhere to the template's already given format for including author biographies. Hope this helps.