Lotfi A. Zadeh joined the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1959, and served as its chairman from 1963 to 1968. Earlier, he was a member of the electrical engineering faculty at Columbia University. In 1956, he was a visiting member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. In addition, he held a number of other visiting appointments, among them a visiting professorship in Electrical Engineering at MIT in 1962 and 1968; a visiting scientist appointment at IBM Research Laboratory, San Jose, CA, in 1968, 1973, and 1977; and visiting scholar appointments at the AI Center, SRI International, in 1981, and at the Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University, in 1987-1988. Currently he is a Professor in the Graduate School, and is serving as the Director of BISC (Berkeley Initiative in Soft Computing). Until 1965, Dr. Zadeh's work had been centered on system theory and decision analysis. Since then, his research interests have shifted to the theory of fuzzy sets and its applications to artificial intelligence, linguistics, logic, decision analysis, control theory, expert systems and neural networks. Currently, his research is focused on fuzzy logic, soft computing and computing with words. An alumnus of the University of Teheran, MIT, and Columbia University, Dr. Zadeh is a fellow of the IEEE, AAAS, ACM and AAAI, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He was the recipient of the IEEE Education Medal in 1973 and a recipient of the IEEE Centennial Medal in 1984. In 1989, Dr. Zadeh was awarded the Honda Prize by the Honda Foundation, and in 1991 received the Berkeley Citation, University of California. In 1992, Dr. Zadeh was awarded the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal "for seminal contributions to information science and systems, including the conceptualization of fuzzy sets." He became a Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences (Computer Sciences and Cybernetics Section) in 1992 and received the Certificate of Commendation for AI Special Contributions Award from the International Foundation for Artificial Intelligence. Also in 1992, he was awarded the Kampe de Feriet Medal and became an Honorary Member of the Austrian Society of Cybernetic Studies. In 1993, Dr. Zadeh received the Rufus Oldenburger Medal from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers "for seminal contributions in system theory, decision analysis, and theory of fuzzy sets and its applications to AI, linguistics, logic, expert systems and neural networks." He was also awarded the Grigore Moisil Prize for Fundamental Researches, and the Premier Best Paper Award by the Second International Conference on Fuzzy Theory and Technology. In 1995, Dr. Zadeh was awarded the IEEE Medal of Honor "for pioneering development of fuzzy logic and its many diverse applications." In 1996, Dr. Zadeh was awarded the Okawa Prize "for outstanding contribution to information science through the development of fuzzy logic and its applications." In 1997, Dr. Zadeh was awarded the B. Bolzano Medal by the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic "for outstanding achievements in fuzzy mathematics." He also received the J.P. Wohl Career Achievement Award of the IEEE Systems, Science and Cybernetics Society. He served as a Lee Kuan Yew Distinguished Visitor, lecturing at the National University of Singapore and the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and as the Gulbenkian Foundation Visiting Professor at the New University of Lisbon in Portugal. Dr. Zadeh holds honorary doctorates from Paul-Sabatier University, Toulouse, France; State University of New York, Binghamton, NY; University of Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany; University of Oviedo, Oviedo, Spain; University of Granada, Granada, Spain; Lakehead University, Canada; University of Louisville, KY; Baku State University, Azerbaijan; and the Silesian Technical University, Gliwice, Poland. Dr. Zadeh has authored close to two hundred papers and serves on the editorial boards of over fifty journals. He is a member of the Technology Advisory Board, U.S. Postal Service; Advisory Committee, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, UC Santa Barbara; Advisory Board, Fuzzy Initiative, North Rhine-Westfalia, Germany; Fuzzy Logic Research Center, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas; Advisory Committee, Center for Education and Research in Fuzzy Systems and Artificial Intelligence, Iasi, Romania; Senior Advisory Board, International Institute for General Systems Studies; the Board of Governors, International Neural Networks Society; and is the Honorary President of the Biomedical Fuzzy Systems Association of Japan and the Spanish Association for Fuzzy Logic and Technologies.