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Soft computing guru will discuss fuzzy logic and related issues

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LOS ALAMOS, N.M., April 14, 2000 -- The director of the Berkeley Initiative in Soft Computing will deliver a Director's Colloquium at the Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory on Tuesday, April 18 at 2:30 pm in the Physics Auditorium. Dr. Lotfi A. Zadeh, known as the "Father of Fuzzy Logic" will speak on the role of natural languages in information processing, decision and control.

The talk is open to the public.

Zadeh is currently a professor in the Graduate School, Computer Science Division of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California at Berkeley, where he has taught since 1959. An alumnus of the University of Teheran, MIT and Columbia University, he was previously a member of the electrical engineering faculty at Columbia and a visiting member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ.

Zadeh's first important work was his doctoral dissertation on the frequency analysis of time-varying networks, in which he introduced the concept of a time-varying transfer function. In 1963, he co-authored a classic text on the state-space theory of linear systems. This book is widely regarded as a landmark in the development of the state-space approach and its application to control and systems analysis.

Prior to the publication of his seminal paper on fuzzy sets in 1965, Zadeh was recognized internationally as one of the leading contributors to the development of system theory and its applications. His paper on fuzzy sets marked the beginning of a new direction. By introducing the concept of a fuzzy set -- a class with unsharp boundaries -- he provided a basis for a qualitative approach to the analysis of complex systems in which linguistic rather than numerical variables are employed to describe system behavior and performance. This approach led to scores of practical applications of fuzzy logic, such as automated climate control systems and self-focusing cameras.

Currently, Zadeh's work is focused on the development of the methodology of computing with words and the computational theory of perceptions, a new direction in fuzzy logic. In his talk Tuesday, he will discuss the construction of a precisiated natural language, one equipped with constraint-centered semantics.

"The concept of a precisiated natural language and the associated methodologies of computing with words and the computational theory of perceptions open the door to a wide-ranging generalization and restructuring of existing theories, especially in the realms of information processing, decision and control," he said.

"In this perspective, what is very likely is that in coming years a number of basic concepts and techniques drawn from linguistics will be playing a much more important role in scientific theories than they do today."

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