REPORT Our lives with fuzzy logic, decision making … · Our lives with fuzzy logic, decision...

Mathware & Soft Computing Magazine. Vol. 20 n. 1 7 / 114

REPORT

Our lives with fuzzy logic, decision makingand optimization: a history of science andfriendshipAn interview to Janusz Kacprzyk and José Luis (�Curro�) Verdegay

Gabriella PasiUniversità di Milano [email protected]

I am very happy for the opportunity to have this vir-tual chat with two pioneers of Fuzzy Decision Making,Decision Analysis and Optimization; the aim of this jointinterview is to o�er readers a short history of the bir-th and setting of the research related to Fuzzy DecisionMaking, Decision Analysis and Optimization in Europe,and of the development and future perspectives of thisimportant research area, and of Fuzzy Logic in general.

Which your scienti�c background is?

Janusz Kacprzyk: My background is control theo-ry and control engineering as I got M.Sc. in automaticcontrol from the Department of Electronics, Warsaw Uni-versity of Technology in 1970, and immediately after thatstarted working for the Institute of Automation, PolishAcademy of Sciences, that changed the name many timesand is now Systems Research Institute, Polish Academy of

Sciences in Warsaw. This background is very importantfor various reasons. First, control theory - that is by somepeople considered to be the highest achievement of appliedmathematics - is a di�cult area that needs a good ma-thematical background along with some understanding ofwhat a system under control, control, optimal control, tra-jectory, etc. really mean. Basically, it is an optimizationfocused area which has had for me a certain advantage anddisadvantage. First, why looking at all kinds of problems,I was immediately inclined to a formal analysis, search foran optimal solution, etc. Some disadvantage was, fromthe point of view of my further interests I will elaborateupon later, that I had to somehow get accustomed to arather logic focused reasoning I have been using later, inparticular concerning the so called fuzzy logic control, inparticular discussed by people like logicians or computerscientists speaking about implications, etc.


in which I could not see control, to be frank. But, thisimpression has been shared by many people in the controlcommunity who, after an initial interest in fuzzy (logic)control, because of its usefulness, have become somehowapprehensive. A second problem in this respect was thatI was accustomed to a di�erential/di�erence equation re-presentations of systems that is dominant in control, andI had to somehow change my perspective as rule based re-presentations have become dominant and most promisingin fuzzy systems.

As usually, the mainstream of science changes over ti-me, and at some time, maybe in the beginning of the 1970sor earlier, some new �elds have become more relevant, bet-ter funded, etc. One of them was systems analysis whichcan be described as a consortium of tools and techniquesfrom various areas like applied mathematics, systems theo-ry, control, economics, decision sciences, etc. employed forsolving relevant real world problems. In 1972 one of themost famous �think tank� institutes in Europe was foun-ded, the International Institute of Applied Systems Ana-lysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, close to Vienna, in Austria.It turned out that this would considerably shape my workand career as I would explain later.

However, in 1973 I found Zadeh's paper �Outline of anew approach to the analysis of complex systems and deci-sion processes� published in IEEE Transactions on Syste-ms, Man and Cybernetics. This was for me like a thunderbecause I saw something that I could not imagine, i.e.that one can meaningfully represent various relationships,systems, dynamics, etc. in linguistic terms, and then uselinguistic rules. It was quite a strange thing for a controltheorist like me. I immediately found quite a natural ap-plication, to the optimization of organizational structures,and my paper was accepted for presentation and publi-cations at the 1974 IFAC Conference on Identi�cation inUdine, Italy. This was a prestigious, predominantly au-tomatic control oriented (organized by the InternationalFederation of Automatic Control, IFAC) conference butthe reviewers have shown a vision. Of course, one of thereason was that though almost nobody knew about fuzzysets, everybody knew Lot� Zadeh who had already beenfamous for years.

However, I had to put those works on the shelf becau-se I started a close collaboration with IIASA in ca. themid-1970s, in the regional development project, to deve-lop and implement a regional agricultural planning modelfor a speci�c region in Poland. This was a huge linearprogramming model (about 100000 variables and 10000or 20000 constraints, if I remember well) that had to besolved at a supercomputer (as meant at that time) in theatomic research center in Pisa, Italy, via a telex line (yes,there were telexes at that time) from Austria. This was avery good experience, nothing fuzzy, but it concerned thesolution of a real problem, interaction with real domain(agricultural) experts, and this had given me very muchas that work was continued well into the 1980s. For the�rst time I encountered a strange, at least to me, pheno-menon that a �wonderfully optimal� solution obtained bya long optimization process, I was so proud of, was imme-diately discarded by human domain experts as unrealistic,�strange�, unacceptable, etc. At that time I realized forthe �rst time that the strict optimization I was accusto-med to may be not the one and only one, and best wayto go and some �softness� in the problem speci�cation andthe very concept of what the solution we were looking forwould be desirable. This had tremendously helped me toeasier understand the �rst paper by Zimmermann on fuz-zy linear programming, and also the �rst papers on somemore general optimization problems by Tanaka, Asai andother people, and �nally - great papers on fuzzy optimiza-tion and mathematical programming by Miguel Delgado,Curro Verdegay, and their associates.

Then, at the end of the 1970s I was more and moreinvolved in fuzzy logic, and attended very relevant confe-rences, mostly organized by EURO (European Federationof Operational Research Societies) at which there were re-gular session or tracks on fuzzy logic. Luckily enough, wehad at that time Hans - Jüergen Zimmermann, who wasPresident of EURO, and Christer Carlsson, also one of toppeople in EURO, and both were very active in fuzzy logic.

At that time I started working on fuzzy multistage op-timal control, notably fuzzy dynamic programming. Forme, a control theorist, this was much more intuitive andnatural than �fuzzy logic control� in which I could notsee much control. This work had resulted in a series ofpapers, 3 books and a IEEE Computational IntelligenceSociety Fuzzy Pioneer Award in 2006. Moreover, aboutthat time in the very end of the 1970s, I started at IIASAworks on the use of fuzzy dynamic programming for themodeling and planning of the so called integrated regio-nal development (now, maybe it would have been calledsustainable. . . ). This was a dynamic model based on 7life quality indicators in which an optimal developmentpolicy (scenario) was determined by using fuzzy dynamicprogramming. A series of paper on this topic culminatedin J. Kacprzyk and A. Straszak, �Determination of sta-ble trajectories for integrated regional development usingfuzzy decision models�, IEEE Transactions on Systems,Man and Cybernetics, Vol. SMC 14, 310 313, 1984. Thispaper was cited as one of the best and most convincingexamples of fuzzy modeling reported in the literature ina special book on the 50th anniversary of operational re-search: L.C. Thomas (Ed.) �Golden Developments in OR�,


Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1987.

At the same time a close collaboration with Mario Fe-drizzi began. Basically, it was my second contact withthe Italian fuzzy researchers because in 1977 I visited Al-do di Luca in the CNR institute in Arco Felice close toNaples, and also met some other people, notably Setti-mo Termini. Then, I met Mario Fedrizzi, and our �rstpaper appeared in the very end of the 1970s. This wasa great collaboration that had been continued until now,which had resulted in tens of joint papers on mostly groupdecision making, consensus, voting theory, etc. We werejoined later by Hannu Nurmi and Sªawek Zadro»ny, andas a result we published quite a high number of all kindof publications, articles, edited volumes, etc.

This was all a kind of decision theoretic and analyticdirection I used to work in the area of fuzzy logic at thattime, and in 1981 I went to Ron Yager as a visiting profes-sor, and stayed with him, and also at some other univer-sities a couple of years, in particular because martial lawwas introduced in Poland and it was impossible to comeback to join my family. This was a very fruitful period forme. First, I could collaborate with Ron, one of the mostinnovative and visionary scientists in our area. I couldcontinue my work on all kinds of decision making, nota-bly fuzzy multicriteria models, but I have (re)discoveredanother aspect of fuzzy logic that was not related to opti-mization, decision theory and analysis, etc. Namely, somehuman consistent representations of information, knowled-ge, reasoning, etc. Most important for my work were twothings I learned at that time: Zadeh's �rst work on lin-guistically quanti�ed propositions, and Ron Yager's use oflinguistically quanti�ed propositions to model aggregation

in multicriteria decision making, and above all, to proposea new concept of a linguistic data summary.

Those works have inspired a multitude of my worksin the future, notably the concept of a fuzzy majority ingroup decision making proposed in 1985, a new fuzzy ma-jority based concept of a degree of consensus proposed wi-th Mario Fedrizzi in 1987, new models of multistage fuzzycontrol, machine learning, etc. During that stay of minein the USA in the beginning of the 1980s I had a chance tofrequently visit Lot� Zadeh in Berkeley who had constan-tly supported me and provided much inspiration - I willsay more about this later. Moreover, while in Berkeley, Ihad a chance to meet Richard Bellman, the founder of dy-namic programming, considered by some people to be thegreatest applied mathematician of all times, and a closefriend of Lot� Zadeh. Bellman had greatly supported myworks on fuzzy dynamic programming and fuzzy multista-ge control until his death. After his death in 1984, I wasactive in the Bellman Continuum conferences organized allover the world by his students and followers. In the mid-1980s I came back to Poland and immediately was invitedto IIASA, at that time to work in the group of Sergei Or-lovski from Russia (then Soviet Union), one of top peoplein fuzzy optimization who introduced some fundamentalconcepts based on fuzzy preferences and fuzzy utilities todecision making models. However, my work concerned adecision support system for local authorities from di�erentcountries along the Danube River. As a result of that workwe proposed with my close collaborators Sªawek Zadro»nyand Andrzej Zióªkowski a new type of a fuzzy databasequery including a fuzzy linguistic quanti�er that made itpossible to �nd records such that, for instance, most orimportant conditions were satis�ed. That type of a fuzzyquery was, �rst of all, implemented at IIASA, then usedin a hotel reservation Web site in Asia and had been partof a commercial database querying system sold by a spin-o� company in the USA. This is probably one of very fewcommercial applications of fuzzy logic in the area of da-tabases and querying. Moreover, a special article on thisnew query was published in Computer World China, witha huge circulation, and - from the scienti�c point of view- many articles have been published.

This work was in fact the beginning of my later involve-ment in more IT/ICT oriented research. In the next years,this was my main area of interest, and among other thingswhich I will mention later on, I would say here that aroundthe mid-1980s I started working on a new idea of compu-ting with words initiated by Lot� Zadeh. I published withhim already in 1999 a huge two volume collection of workson the foundations and applications of this new idea, andI had been continuing this works along many dimensionsuntil now.

I also have to tell that, though my works for manyyears, maybe decades, have been more in computer scien-ce (maybe better to say IT/ICT), I am still active as a�real� control theorist and I am also supervising PhD dis-sertations in mobile robotics though using evolutionarycomputing not fuzzy logic but the latter will be includedin next dissertations that are planned.

José Luis (�Curro�) Verdegay: My �rst contactwith fuzzy set theory and fuzzy systems dates back to the


late 70s. By then, the scienti�c level of research carried inthe Department to which I belonged was quite low, withteaching and classic mathematics being the only topics onwhich we got encouragement. Totally by chance, I ran in-to the book �Introduction à la théorie des sous-ensembles�ous à l'usage des ingénieurs, Vol. 1 Éléments théoriquesde base� by Arnold Kaufmann. For me, it was like discove-ring a new world, which I immediately started to explorewith the aid of my close friend Miguel Delgado, who alsobecame my PhD supervisor.

Those were very intense years. We belonged to theDepartment of Statistics and Operational Research, whe-re everybody disliked everything related to Fuzzy Logic.Little by little, we created a group of researchers on thistopic, which included Amparo Vila, María Teresa Lama-ta, Serafín Moral, Antonio González, Luis de Campos andsome others. We started gaining visibility through ourpapers and participation in conferences, meetings and wo-rkshop, within Spain and abroad. We strengthened linkswith Fuzzy Logic researchers from Catalonia, such as En-ric Trillas, Llorenç Valverde, Claudi Alsina, Teresa Riera,Francesc Esteva and Ramón López de Mántaras. As aconsequence, we won international recognition, and ourresearch topic quickly moved away from the classical re-search of our Department of Statistics and OperationalResearch. Finally, supported by the Rector of the Uni-versity of Granada and by Enric Trillas (at that time,President of the Spanish Council for Scienti�c Research- CSIC), we separated from our original Department andcreated the Department of Computer Science and Arti�-cial Intelligence (DECSAI) which became in charge of theGrade on Computer Science as well as of the correspondingpost-grade studies.

The �rst years were nothing but easy: little fundingfor research, lots of lectures, few o�ces and laborato-ries. . . But, step by step, we incorporated young teacherswho we trained. Nowadays some of them are widely knownall around the world. The �rst ones were Francisco (Paco)Herrera and Juan Luis Castro. Later, supported by theearliest research projects we got, professors Olga Pons,Juan Huete, Enrique Herrera and Oscar Cordón, amongothers, entered the department and eventually formed theGranada Team. I must acknowledge the generous supportof people such as Enric Trillas, Llorenç Valverde, ClaudiAlsina and Ramón López de Mántaras, who were alwaysbehind us to encourage us and show us the way to well-made Science. They were, and still are, close friends of us.To summarize, since them, with a little group of about15 pioneers, we get at the current situation of DECSAI,whose 25th anniversary is being commemorated this year.About 100 people belong to DECSAI today, 23 of whichare Full Professors, organized in 9 research groups headedby Miguel Delgado, Amparo Vila, María Tersa Lamata,Paco Herrera, Juan Luis Castro and others. We work inboth theoretic and applied developments related to FuzzyLogic, Soft Computing, and Intelligent Systems in gene-ral. Currently there are 3 spin-o�s founded by DECSAImembers.

Hence, as it may be obvious, my professional career hasdeveloped in parallel with the Department and the Gra-nada Team. I received the Ph.D. degree in sciences fromthe University of Granada in 1981 and since 1991 I'm afull Professor at DECSAI and a member of the Modelsof Decision and Optimization (MODO) Research Group.Besides I'm Coordinator of the Master on Soft Computingand Intelligent Systems between University of Granadaand University of Computer Sciences (Cuba). I've publi-shed seventeen books and more than 300 scienti�c and te-chnical papers in leading scienti�c journals, and I've beenAdvisor of 19 Ph.D. dissertations. I have served on manyinternational program committees and have attended nu-merous national and international conferences, congresses,and workshops. I've been Principal Researcher in a varie-ty of national and international research and educationalprojects, and currently I lead a research project on �Ap-plicability of the Soft Computing in Advanced TechnologyEnvironments: Sustainability�. I've a large experience inthe evaluation of the quality of academic institutions. I ha-ve been member and President of a number of committeeswith the European Training Foundation and the SpanishMinistry of Education. I'm also a member of the Edito-rial Board of several international leading journals in thearea of Fuzzy Sets and Systems. I served as Chairman ofDECSAI (1990-1994), President (founder) of the SpanishAssociation for Fuzzy Logic and Technologies (1990-1996),Advisor for Intelligent Technologies of the Spanish Scien-ce Inter-Ministry Commission (1995-1996) and Director ofInternational A�airs at the University of Granada (1996-2000). I'm an IFSA fellow, IEEE Senior member, and Ho-norary Member of the Cuban Academy of Mathematicsand Computation. Besides I've the Featured Possition of�Invited Professor� at the �Instituto Superior PolitécnicoJosé Antonio Echevarría� (Havana, Cuba), University ofHolguín (Holguín, Cuba) and Central University �MartaAbreu� of �Las Villas� (Santa Clara, Cuba). Along allthis time my research has focused on di�erent aspects ofdecision making and optimization methods in fuzzy en-vironments, with contributions to the resolution of real


problems in a variety of contexts, such as Undergroundstations location in Kinshasa, design of beef cattle diets inArgentinean farms, control of tobacco leaf drying in Cu-ba, and some more. Currently, I serve as Delegate of theRector for ICT at University of Granada. My current re-search interests are around solution methods and modelsof Dynamic Optimization Problems.

When did you encounter �fuzzy logic� for the �rsttime, and when did you meet Lofti Zadeh for the�rst time?

Janusz Kacprzyk: This is a very good, yet a sligh-tly complicated question. First, in my case, as somebodyfrom control theory, systems analysis, etc., the fact is thatI have known Lot� Zadeh �for ever�, even if not personal-ly. One thing that many people do not know is that hehas already been famous while introducing the concept ofa fuzzy set in the mid 1960s. First of all, if I read thatLot� Zadeh is famous as the inventor a fuzzy sets, I amstarting somehow smiling because, for instance, if you justlook at how many people use his ideas, you can easily seethat his ideas related to the state space approach havebeen employed since the early 1960s (after his book wi-th Charles Desoer) everywhere, explicitly and implicitly,by everybody who is doing mathematical modeling of anykind, systems modeling and optimization, etc. etc. Thenumber of these people is far larger than the number ofpeople in fuzzy logic!

The signs of Zadeh's extremely high stature in sciencewere so many, and let me just tell about a couple of them.In the early/mid 1970s, when I was working at IIASA, the�rst Director was Howard Rai�a from Harvard University,a good friend of Zadeh, and he always mentioned Zadehwhen we were meeting. IIASA was a very special think ta-nk of a new formula (international, a �bridge� between theWest and East), that have had always attracted most fa-mous scientists, notably Nobel Prize winners. As a youngperson at that time I was often requested to accompanythem to Vienna or somewhere else in Austria, and we hada chance to talk. All of them, both form the USA likeKoopmans or the USSR, like Kantorovich, knew Zadehand fully appreciated his stature and works, but none ofthem were mentioning his works on fuzzy sets . . .

Finally, last year my PhD student from the famousLincoln Lab at MIT defended his dissertation. I had achance to often visit him at MIT and talk to him and ma-ny professors there, even younger ones. What was strikingis that even if they were not proponents of fuzzy logic, asit often happens at such top universities, they fully appre-ciated Zadeh's greatness (but again not only due to fuzzy!)and were proud that he was an MIT graduate.

I met Lot� Zadeh in person probably in the early/mid1970s at some conference and has since then enjoyed hisfull support and inspiration. This has been so importantto me and shaped not only my research but my attitu-de to people and science. But, as I mentioned above, my�meeting� with Zadeh dated back to many years before. Iwas telling the above because we, the fuzzy logic people,should remember that one of the main reasons that fuzzylogic had survived in spite of apprehension and criticism,and had been �ourishing, is due to Lot� Zadeh's staturein science. It is extremely di�cult to launch a new theoryand attract many people when a founder is not alreadyknown in science. Examples are numerous.

From my personal point of view Lot�'s support was ex-tremely important because at that time we did not haveanybody powerful enough in the Polish scienti�c establi-shment who was supporting fuzzy logic. The situation inSpain was di�erent because of Enric Trillas who was bo-th a great scientist supporting fuzzy logic, and a powerfulperson in the Spanish research structure.

Curro Verdegay: As I mentioned above, mi �rst en-counter with fuzzy logic was motivated by Kaufmann'sbook, which I want to emphasize as the best book on thebasics of fuzzy sets, and which I still recommend to mystudents to come into this topic. This happened around1978-79. It was already very di�cult to carry researchon something that was outside the common topics, butit was even more to get �nancial support to go out ofSpain. It was through Miguel Delgado that I met EnricTrillas and, with his continuous initiatives, support andencouragement, we eventually managed to organize a sortof �Spanish Working Group on Fuzzy Sets� which, to so-me extent, served us to �protect� against the defeat of theclassical Spanish academia and, at the same time, set usfree to investigate what we were really interested in. Afterhard work, and of course with our own funding, we �nallygot to participate in an international conference where Icould contact Lot� and meet him in person. It was in 1983and I still remember it with emotion. His casualness, clo-seness and above all, the depth of his lectures were for mean example of behavior which I have always tried to follow.I believe that such conference, organized by Elie Sanchezin Marseille, has been the one with the highest scienti�clevel in which I have ever taken part. In there I also hadthe opportunity to meet Arnold Kaufmann himself, as wellas Elie Sanchez, Hans Jurgen Zimmermann, Ron Yager,Stefan Chanas, Didier Dubois and Henri Prade, MichioSugeno, . . .

How much was the meeting with Lot� in�uencialto your subsequent research?

Janusz Kacprzyk: This has very much to do withwhat I told before but maybe I will rephrase this a little


bit and put in another perspective. First, the in�uence ofa person on research is a multiaspect issue that does notonly concern research as such, and I will try to elaborateon that.

Let me start with somehow repeating what I said be-fore that my meeting with Lot� had a �virtual� and �real�dimension. That virtual dimension is related to the factthat Lot� was famous in the control and systems researchcommunity, so that by necessity I was using his ideas, andin my pre-fuzzy period this was related to his state spaceapproach I had been extensively using in my mathematicalmodeling works. My �real�, personal meeting, or - betterto say - numerous meeting - with Lot� have had a tremen-dous impact on my research and career. One should takeinto account that when I met him for the �rst time I wasvery young, just in the beginning of my career, and it isin general very important at such a stage to have a men-tor of a real stature, friendly and with a positive attitude.Lot� was like this. I think that he could easily recognizethat, as any other person, I had some stronger and weakerpoints, and he tried to inspire me taking that into account. . . But, I can see this now, with my experience.

To be more speci�c, in the �rst period of my work, Iwas mostly inspired by his works on linguistic modelingand he had been ingenious enough to show its potential toa person of an strict, control theoretic background. Buthe could understand limitations of such a person as his ex-perience was similar. Then, what has resulted in some ofmy most relevant works, he inspired me through his paperwith Richard Bellman on a fuzzy approach to decision ma-king, notably fuzzy dynamic programming. He wrote thatpaper in 1970 and when we met for the �rst time he wasno longer very much interested in that topic but, noticingmy interest, he supported it and gave me very relevantsuggestions that I had included in my further works.

In last years what I did mostly appreciate is that whilehe noticed my interest in computing with words, he wasalways supporting and inspiring me to do research in thatarea though we had been disagreeing a little bit becauseI was always stressing a need to relate computing withwords to huge research e�orts in computational linguisticsand natural language understanding, processing and ge-neration. To summarize, I would say that in our life weneed an inspiration, boost and support by somebody whois not only a professional authority but a person with vi-sion, and also friendly and full of positive energy, and ofgreat personal qualities. When we meet such a person,and take advantage of such an encounter, then all greatthings can happen to us. This is exactly the role Lot� hasalways played in my life, even beyond my professional life.

Curro Verdegay: All the Works by Lot� have had agreat in�uence in my scienti�c career. There is no workby him that, after having read it, has not stimulated myinterest and subsequently my acknowledgment for what Ibelieve is a prodigious mind. In those years, what hada greatest in�uence on my later research was the intro-duction and development of fuzzy logic from its basis andfoundations (the concept of linguistic variable, and eve-rything related to Approximate reasoning), as well as theconversations I could hold with him. Because, after that�rst meeting in Marseille, subsequent meetings with Lot�

became more and more often, as well as his visits to Spain.Therefore, there were a lot of opportunities to hear his wi-se thoughts, his simple, almost trivial conceptualizations(as if we were dealing with a fairy tale) of truly di�cultproblems that were unsolvable within the context of classicmathematics and probability.

Where and how did you meet each other the �rsttime, and at what stage of your career were you?

Janusz Kacprzyk: This is both a simple and trickyquestion, as I will try to elaborate upon. First, as in thecase of Lot�, I will divide my meeting with Curro into the�virtual� and �real� one.

That �virtual� meeting with Curro has to do with afar wider issue. Namely, in the early mid 1980s, when Icame back from the USA, I was close to the late Profes-sor Helena Rasiowa, a famous mathematician and logicianwhose books like, for instance, �Mathematics of metama-thematics�, and many works have enjoyed a worldwide po-pularity. I used to visit her as she was living not far. Wetalked about mostly mathematics. She knew very wellLot�, and was never against fuzzy logic. In a Wiley vo-lume we edited with Lot� in 1992, she wrote a very spe-cial article mentioning fuzzy logic in a positive sense, andthis was probably the only example when a world class�non-fuzzy mathematician� wrote an article to a volumeon fuzzy logic.

Professor Rasiowa told me once that she knew manywell-known Spanish logicians, mostly from Catalonia, andone of them was Enric Trillas. I had known him for someyears, and I even met him in New York in the early-1980s.I started looking more carefully at the Spanish fuzzy com-munity who had already then been very active and pro-minent. Another very important aspect was that EnricTrillas had a very high position in the Spanish researchadministration structure which was the only example inthe world as in virtually all countries people who wereactive in fuzzy logic did not have high level positions inscience and hence could not support fuzzy research. Thiswas the case in Poland, for instance, where the support forfuzzy logic was mediocre but step by step we had changedthis. As I had always been inclined towards optimization,decision theory and analysis, and the like, I had natural-


ly got interested in the works of the Granada group onoptimization and related topics, notably by Miguel Delga-do and Curro Verdegay. Even those early works of them,and their collaborators (and wonderful wifes!), have beco-me real events in the area of fuzzy optimization that havebeen widely cited as mile stones.

So, similarly as in the case of Lot�, I have known �vir-tually� Curro for a long time, but only from his workswhich is important but not enough . . . I think that our�rst personal, i.e. �real�, meeting occurred at the �rstIFSA World Congress in 1985 in Palma de Mallorca in1985. This was a great event that, �rst of all, showed apotential of the �eld of fuzzy logic, and the emergence of areally large and strong community. Moreover, a multitudeof personal meetings, like mine with Curro, have inspiredpeople, and often triggered joint works.

With Curro, and his Granada associates, we have im-mediately found a common language and came up with anidea to organize a joint Spanish - Polish meeting. Such ini-tiatives were supported by authorities at both the PolishAcademy of Sciences and the Consejo Superior de Investi-gaciones Cienti�cas. This meeting was held in 1988, andthen next meetings followed in Poland and Spain. It wasa very interesting experience because Poland was at thevery end of the Communist system and Spain was for us avery special country which had some bad experience withtotalitarism but after its end had catched up rapidly withan extraordinary progress. That is why we had alwaysconsidered that the Spanish way was for us to follow.

That meeting was for me extremely important becauseI think that we have immediately found that our friend-ship is more than just a professional acquaintance, thatwe can always can rely on ourselves, and that this willlast. I am honoured and extremely happy that, as it hasalways been, Curro remains a special person to me, a realfriend. I can say the same about his spouse, Maite. Thisconcerns in fact the entire Granada group. Such a relationis getting more and more rare nowadays when people aretoo busy to stop and think about things that are moreimportant than an immediate loss or gain, and which lastlonger. Friendship is clearly one of the most importantthings of such a type.

Curro Verdegay: Yes, it was in the IFSAWorld Con-gress that was held in Mallorca in 1985. Actually I knewJanusz from long before, but only for his works. By thenI was very interested in everything related to Multi-stageDecision, and Janusz had published a lot of works aboutit, which I knew because he had sent them to me by mail.Since the �rst time he answered my requests, I knew hehad to be an exceptional person: he always replied veryfast, including some kind manuscript words and answeringevery question I had made. Then in 1983 he published hisbook �Multistage Decision Making under Fuzziness (Ver-lag TÜV Rheinland, Cologne)�, which I consider a must-have book for anyone interested in this topic, and soon af-ter that, I met him personally. It was him who recognizedme and came to chat with me after Enric Trillas had senthim to me for organizing a Spanish-Polish meeting. So inthat �rst meeting we dealt with the organization of the�rst Spanish-Polish conference on �Computer Science andSystems Analysis�, which was held in 1988 in Granada, inthe middle of the �rst general strike held in Spain afterCivil War. Janusz and myself immediately got along verywell, and that �rst contact was the beginning of our friend-ship, which trascends the professional �eld, as I think ofhim as a member of my family.

You both worked on Fuzzy Optimization: canyou shortly report your joint contributions in thisarea?

Janusz Kacprzyk: And, again, the response heremay be viewed from a �real� and �virtual� perspective. The�real� perspective is related to our really joint work, an edi-ted volume on fuzzy optimization published by Springer(Physica) in 1995. This was an important volume, some7 years after my �rst volume on fuzzy optimization editedwith Sergei Orlovski, which had satis�ed a real need at itstime. Then, Amparo, Curro, Miguel and myself, becameconvinced that there was a real need for putting togetheragain a large book with a broad survey of what has beendone in fuzzy optimization, its theory and applications inthe years after that �rst volume. That 1995 project wasa success from a scienti�c point of view, but more thanthat, our collaboration had shown that our friendship hadsurvived very well, and had even been stronger, which isnot always the case when people undertake joint works. . .

The �virtual� perspective is slightly more complicated.Let me repeat what I wrote before about my experien-ce with IIASA where I was working years on large linearprogramming models for agricultural production planning.After a huge e�ort just to solve those huge models, andunderstand the results obtained that was even more im-portant, I was more and more convinced that one of thereasons for a moderate success we had had with the agri-cultural domain specialists was the rigidness of the tra-ditional linear programming models, and some fuzzinesswould be good. I tried to use Zimmermann's version offuzzy linear programming which, from my point of view,was easier to implement, because it needed only the spe-ci�cation of some imprecisely speci�ed bounds for the ob-jective function value and constraints. I knew very wellthat the use of Verdegay and Delgado's approach withfuzzily speci�ed parameters would be a far better choi-


ce. Unfortunately, this would need much money to obtainnew, imprecisely speci�ed (even as triangular or trapezoidnumbers) parameters, right hand sides, etc. I could notdo this for �nancial reasons, maybe also because of thesize of the model and the fact that the use of that approa-ch would increase too much the size of my, already hugemodel. However, Curro's work has clearly inspired mine.

Curro Verdegay: Since we met, we have organizedmany joint activities. The �rst were the First Spanish-Polish Conference on Computer Science and Systems Ana-lysis (Granada , 1988) and the Second Polish-Spanish Con-ference on Systems Analysis (Rozalin, 1990). Then theTEMPUS program in �Computer Science and Analysis ofSystems Training� (COAST) was developed and we, SRI-PAS and DECSAI, participated together with the Uni-versity of Trento (Mario Fedrizzi), Technical Universityof Wroclaw (Stefan Chanas) and Lorand Eotvos Univer-sity (Margit Kovacs and Robert Fuller). COAST was agood example of an international collaboration that con-tributed to enforce the theoretical basis of several topics:Fuzzy optimization, of course, but also fuzzy decision ma-king (consensus reaching), Decision support systems in fu-zzy environments, and so on. An important part of thosecontributions were collected in a book that constitutes,in my opinion, a reference work for anyone who wants toknow the foundations of this topic: �Fuzzy Optimization:Recent Advances� (Physica-Verlag, 1994) in which, in ad-dition to Janusz and myself, professors Miguel Delgadoand Amparo Vila served as editors. After that �rst work,joint contributions have been very often and, in almost allcases, we have been accompanied in them by Mario Fedri-zzi, whom I consider another excellent scienti�c and closefriend of mine.

How your meeting had an in�uence on the de-velopment of Fuzzy Decision Making in Europe?

Janusz Kacprzyk: It is a di�cult question thatshould be answered from various perspectives. First, froma more global, world scale perspective there has not been,and still is not something that might be described as a co-herent theory of �fuzzy decision making� in the sense whatyou can �nd - to just name a few - in the schools of Raif-fa, Kahneman and Tversky, Slovic, Roy, etc. In the fuzzy

�eld there are many scattered works that address someparticular problems but not from a general point of view,and they are rarely cited in works summarizing the sta-te of the art in decision making, decision theory, decisionanalysis, etc. Maybe the only serious work in that fuz-zy direction following the traditional, coherent approachis a series of books by K.K. Dompere that have appearedover the years in my Springer book series �Studies in Fu-zziness and Soft Computing� in which he analyzes deeplyutility theory under fuzziness, choice theory, etc. He is areal economist so that when he says an utility function,he knows what he means, and in most works on �fuzzy de-cision making� they have a mere valuation function, callit an utility function, with all kind of problems as mathe-matical assumptions cannot be omitted. The situation isbetter with respect to fuzzy preference based models dueto works by, for instance, Ovchinnikov, De Baets, Fodor,etc. But, again, this is not a coherent theory.

First, for sure our meeting has resulted in an imme-diate decision to do something together, starting with theorganization of some network. It is di�cult to list eve-rything but let me just name a few. First, we tried togather a group of friends, notably Mario Fedrizzi, withwhom I had collaborated for years, then the group wasenlarged by - on the one hand - Hannu Nurmi and SªawekZadro»ny, who had been involved in joint works on groupdecision making, consensus formation, social choice andvoting, and - on the other hand - by people like Ron Ya-ger who, though being from outside of Europe, had beenpart of that group working together with us.

Curro Verdegay: To be honest, I think it has beenvery in�uent. The �rst Spanish-Polish meetings I com-mented before originated the TEMPUS programme whi-ch, apart from providing last-generation computers to theresearch groups involved in Poland and Hungary, enabledthe birth of a working group that has been very producti-ve in the �eld of fuzzy optimization and decision making.Concerning fuzzy optimization, important progress (nowconsidered �classics�) were made, only slowed down by thepassing of my friend Stefan Chanas. Robert Fuller alsoplayed a prominent role in such advances. Regarding fuz-zy decision making, the involvement of Mario Fedrizzi andJanusz opened a new research line which, more recently,has been intensely developed by my close friend, and disci-ple, Enrique Herrera-Viedma. This trend was initiated inthe Seminars organized by Mario at University of Trento,which served as a catalyst of results, projects and publica-tions with international academic recognition. Anyway, Ishould stress that the �rst meeting between Janusz andmyself in Palma de Mallorca was due to Enric Trillas,who is in my opinion the true creator of all subsequentcollaboration, and to whom we should be grateful for it.

Which are your research outcomes that you feelmore proud of?

Janusz Kacprzyk: Though it is di�cult to speakabout own works, maybe I would try to give my brief,clearly biased opinion. I will list in this list both sometheoretical works and practical applications.

First, just because this work has been probably bestassessed by the community since I received for this the


2006 IEEE CIS Fuzzy Pioneer Award, these are my workson fuzzy multistage optimal control, notably fuzzy dyna-mic programming. I am particularly glad that I was ablein this respect to propose some new models, like with afuzzy termination time, and - what was probably the mostinteresting and challenging part of that work - a new classof models with an in�nite termination times which wasmathematically very challenging. I was happy that thiswork had provided me with a multistage planning modelthat was used in to �nd optimal development scenarios inregional planning, and that work had been cited as one ofthe best and most convincing examples of fuzzy modelingreported in the literature in a special book on the 50thanniversary of operational research in L.C. Thomas (Ed.)�Golden Developments in OR�, Pergamon Press, Oxford,1987.

Then, I think that I am very happy with my works onfuzzy database queries, which were predominantly donewith Sªawek Zadro»ny, notably on queries with fuzzy lin-guistic quanti�ers. These works are widely cited by mostpeople in the community, have implementations and arepart of a commercial product.

I think that I can also be satis�ed with my works, alsodone mostly with Sªawek Zadro»ny, on linguistic summa-ries of data, both in the static and dynamic (time series)context. The introduction of an analysis in terms of Za-deh's protoforms, and above all the proposal of how to ge-nerate linguistic summaries by using the linguistic quanti-�er driven fuzzy querying system is interesting both theo-retically and practically, and has also been implementedin a decision support system in a small computer retailer.

And last but not least, I am satis�ed with my involve-ment in the research on intuitionistic fuzzy sets. I thinkthat I have been supporting the founder of this theory,Krassimir Atanassov, and help him and the communityto advance the theory by taking into account opinions ofthe wider audience, and hence to shape this theory in aconstructive manner, to fully take advantage of its stren-gths. This has been done in collaboration with EulaliaSzmidt, to whom I am grateful for a long time and fruitfulcollaboration.

And, in addition to fuzzy logic, I am particularly hap-py with the results of my 3 PhD students. First, for thework of my PhD student from MIT who has developed,implemented and tested a novel evo-devo (evolutionarydevelopmental biology inspired) approach to satellite ima-ge classi�cation, and of my 2 PhD students working onthe use of memetic algorithms for the global and local pa-th planning in non-holonomic mobile robots. This workshave been done for a commercial robot and the algorithmsdeveloped will be o�ered as an option in the path planningsoftware.

From a more formal point of view, I am glad that Ihave been elected Full Member of the Polish Academy ofSciences, a body of 360 professors from all �elds, as a re-cognition for my works mostly on fuzzy logic which wouldnot have been possible in the past, and even the greatestand most powerful opponent of fuzzy logic was not toostrongly against me . . . .

I am also very proud of being elected a Foreign Mem-ber of the Spanish Royal Academy of Economic and Fi-

nancial Sciences (RACEF) because, though I am not eneconomist, that prestigious group, to which many greatscientists belong, including many Nobel Prize winners li-ke Kahneman, Stiglitz and Aumann, has appreciated myworks on the use of fuzzy logic for economic modeling andmanagement.

Curro Verdegay: Every single result I have obtainedinvolving Fuzzy Sets and Systems has been inspired in aprevious concept or idea concerning a problem conceptua-lized by Zadeh, with no exceptions. Hence, what I feelmore proud of is the fact that Lot� considers me as oneof his friends, and has allowed me to share his ideas andthoughts. But, together with this, I am also very proudof each of the 19 doctoral dissertations I have supervised,among which I can cite those by Francisco Herrera, Enri-que Herrera-Viedma or David Pelta. In any case, all mymain �ndings have been around Fuzzy Optimization, par-ticularly around Fuzzy Mathematical Programming, andFuzzy Decision Making, mainly multiperson decision ma-king. As theoretic topics (alpha-cut based approach forsolving Fuzzy Optimization problems, using fuzzy controlrules as termination criterion of the algorithms or fuzzy se-ts based metaheuristics) as real practical applications de-veloped worldwide (Argentina, Cuba, Brazil, R.D. Congo,. . . ) have an special feeling for me.

Apart from the valuable scienti�c outcome of youractivity, which is the most important outcome ofyour work in this �eld?

Janusz Kacprzyk: If one takes my activity in the�eld of fuzzy logic but not related to research, I think thatI have always tried to contribute to the fuzzy communitymostly by working in EUSFLAT, IFSA, IEEE Compu-tational Intelligence Society. To be slightly more speci-�c, I have been active in EUSFLAT practically since itsfoundation, serving in various bodies.

Moreover, for many years I have been active in IFSA,being �rst a member of the Council, but I think that myservice as Treasurer in the period of 2003 - 2007 was verydi�cult and important because during that time we hadto transfer IFSA funds from Japan, and after a period ofdi�culties in �nancial operations, we had �nally found asolution to transfer the IFSA account to Finland where itstill is. My service to IFSA has culminated in the period


of 2007 - 2009 when I served as President. I think thatduring my term we were doing well, in particular with re-spect to an extension of the program of supporting youngresearchers, mostly by subsidizing their participation atconferences and awarding their papers, dissertations, etc.

I also consider my activities at and for IEEE Compu-tational Intelligence Society which practically started in2007 after my elevation to the level of Fellow of IEEE andwhen I received Fuzzy Pioneer Award, both in 2006. Iserved in many bodies like the Award Committee, FellowsCommittee, etc. and wrote references for many peoplewho were then elevated to those high levels, received pre-stigious IEEE medals and award, etc. In the last threeyears I served as a member of the Administrative Com-mittee (Adcom) of IEEE CIS, and also as a lecturer in theDistinguished Lecturer Program, promoting fuzzy logic allover the world. I think that I can also consider as my ac-complishment the fact that for almost 20 years I have beenthe editor in chief of 5 book series at Springer that belongto the largest in the world, notably �Studies in Fuzzinessand Soft Computing� and �Studies in Computational In-telligence�, with hundreds of books and volumes. Tens ofpeople from the fuzzy �eld have had a place where theirworks could have been published by one of the world'smost reputable and second largest scienti�c publisher whocould guarantee distribution and exposure as opposed tosmall and obscure publishers who can only promise this.

Of course, the biggest achievement and joy of anyscientist and scholar are his or her disciples and followers,and I was happy to have many of them, about 10 PhDstudent from Poland, China and the USA, and many col-laborators who I tried to properly direct and shape usingmy experience.

Curro Verdegay: I would like to emphasize severalthings. First, that by no means the achievements thatcan be imputed to mean are due to my merits only. Inthis sense I am convinced that I would have achieved no-thing without the support, work and involvement of myDepartment, the Department of Computer Science andArti�cial Intelligence of the University of Granada, gene-rally known as GRANADA Team. As it is well-known, theGRANADA Team poses such members as Miguel Delga-do, Amparo Vila, Francisco Herrera, Ma Teresa Lamata,Enrique Herrera-Viedma, Oscar Cordón, Juan Luis Castroand many others. I am very proud and satis�ed with therecognition we have won for the research carried during

the last two decades. But it also �lls me with pride to ha-ve been the founder and �rst president of the �Fuzzy Logicand Technologies (FLAT) Spanish Association�, which welater turned into the �European Society for Fuzzy Logicand Technology� (EUSFLAT). And last but not least, Iam very satis�ed as well with my university cooperationactivities, �rst with universities of the old East Europe,then with some universities of Sub-Saharan Africa, mainlyDR Congo, and in the last years with Cuban universities,where Fuzzy Sets and Systems have an important presencein the research activity carried out in the main universitiesof such country.

The scienti�c community �ourished around Lot�Zadeh and Fuzzy Logic has an important and in-valuable characteristics: it is friendly and humanrelationships have been developed and gave birtht solid friendships. Can you shortly report on yourexperience?

Janusz Kacprzyk: This is a very important questionand issue. First, if you look at Lot� Zadeh, then - at the�rst glance - he may seem to be a lonely player because hehas rarely been writing papers with somebody else, andalso the number of his PhD student is not as high as onecould expect. However, if you look from a wider perspec-tive, you can clearly see that the number of his disciples ishuge. By a disciple I mean a person who has been inspiredby Lot�, and whose career has been shaped and boostedby his or her encounter and interaction with Lot�. In thissense this has been the case for many, maybe most, of peo-ple working in the fuzzy �eld who have gained a statureand recognition because they have met Lot� and his novelideas at a right time. Otherwise, they - or we, in general -would have had problems to get a similarly high positionin traditional areas, notably in mathematics or computerscience.

Moreover, looking at Lot�'s works and activities froma broader perspective, one can say that his friendly andconstructive attitude, his famous saying �whatever theysay take it as a compliment�, and his great human quali-ties in general, have contributed to a large extent to boththe development and proliferation of fuzzy logic, and thefuzzy community, and an overall friendly atmosphere inthat community. As I always say, in science there is aneed to �ght for money, recognition, etc. but one shouldconcentrate on that �ght with other �elds, and within theown �eld one should support each other to get a syner-gy and attain much more together. This is what I haveclearly learned from Lot�.

Curro Verdegay: Me personally (although I think Iam not wrong if I speak on behalf of the whole GRANADATeam), I am very grateful to Lot� for a lot of things, someof which I have already mentioned through this interview.There is one more that stands apart: he has always actedas an Ambassador of GRANADA Team. He was appoin-ted Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Granada in1996. One could think it was from then that he started hisrole as �ambassador�, but this is not true. Probably due tothe close relationship he has always had with Enric Trillas,and also due to Enric's family links with Granada, Lot�has always gifted the GRANADA Team with his friend-


ship. As a consequence, we have a large group of friends allover the world, among which the �rst ones (just for beingthe �rst ones) pose a special place in our memoirs. I amreferring to members such as the already mentioned ElieSanchez, Enrique Ruspini, Takeshi Yamakawa, Ron Yager,Philippe Smets, Piero Bonisonne or Michio Sugeno. And,in a more personal aspect, friends such as Mario Fedriz-zi, Bernadette Bouchon, Christer Carlsson, Hans Zimmer-mann, Robert Fuller or Fernando Gomide have been veryimportant for me. And �nally I have to recall the Spanishfamily of Fuzzy Sets and Systems, generated around EnricTrillas and impossible to enumerate as they are hundreds!

Since 1965, Fuzzy Set Theory, Fuzzy Logic, Pos-sibility Theory and their applications had a bigevolution. Which scienti�c perspective you seein this domain? And which are the big researchchallenges of next years?

Janusz Kacprzyk: This is an extremely importantquestion for each �eld of science, and maybe is particularlytrue for fuzzy logic, for various reasons. First, one shouldbear in mind that fuzzy logic is predominantly within ap-plied sciences, notably in applied mathematics. Of course,there are some questions in the so-called �fuzzy mathema-tics� that are more general and they should be seriou-sly pursued, notably by attracting more top �traditional�mathematicians to that research.

The second aspect is related to the above mentionedfact that fuzzy logic is within applied science. This is abig advantage but one should bear in mind that we cannotstay in fuzzy logic control only because it has been provedto be useful. We should go further into control and

introduce more sophisticated, more �control like� applica-tions of fuzzy logic.

Another thing that we should be aware of is that if weassume the fact that has been known for years or decades,that (mathematical) modeling is the king, then a natu-ral question is which type of models people mostly use invarious �elds of science and technology. Many people infuzzy logic think in this context of rule based models on-ly but this is not true. Most of mathematical modelingis done by using di�erential and di�erence equations, toan extent higher maybe by the order of magnitude. Yet,the progress in the fuzzi�cation of di�erential/di�erenceequations is not adequate. I spoke about this already in1999 at the FUZZ-IEEE Conference in Seoul, got someexplanations but the fact remains valid: people who areusing di�erential/di�erence equations often express a needfor some imprecise formulation but they cannot �nd toolsand techniques that are e�ective and e�cient enough.

A similar situation is with broadly perceived decisiontheory, more sophisticated types of optimization, for in-stance non-di�erentiable optimization, and many other�elds in which people want us to propose serious and com-prehensive models capable of handling fuzziness. But, oneshould know that models existing in those areas are sophi-sticated and well developed and a straightforward fuzzi�-cation that is just based on intuition, common sense andsimple tricks will not be accepted by those communities.

In this respect I would also mention a need to reachout to other communities. We tend to somehow operatewithin a restricted community of �fuzzy people� who aremostly computer scientists, applied mathematicians or li-ke this. We overlook very interesting developments andapplications of fuzzy sets in, for instance, mathematicaleconomics (viz. Dompere's books I mentioned before) or


social sciences. We consider them too simple mathema-tically, forgetting of course that our works are probablyjudged in the same way by mathematicians. Those worksdo present real applications of fuzzy logic that providesnew tools for analyses and solutions to those areas.

And �nally, a big challenge is to �nd ways for makingfuzzy logic a generally acceptable tools for real world im-plementation. Very much has been done in this respectfor instance by Piero Bonissone and Dimitar Filev whohave combined a high level science with real applications.We do need more such people as no area that is withinapplied sciences can survive without real applications. Ofcourse, by applications I do not mean what comes out ofeven successful research projects, national or European,but an implementation, i.e. when somebody, but not thegovernment, wants to pay money for what we do, andreally needs our work.

These are just some challenges I can see which are so-mehow triggered by my long time involvement in fuzzyand not only fuzzy research, real applications, collabora-tion with famous think tanks and labs. They are seriousbut if I look at so many great people in our community, Iam sure that they will �nd ways to face those challengesand overcome any di�culties we may have. I am sure thatfuzzy logic will �ourish in the future as it has done sinceits inception.

And also, I am sure that my friendship with Curro willcontinue, and we have not yet said the last word, in scienceand beyond.

Curro Verdegay: From my point of view there aretwo main research lines to be investigated. On the onehand, it is necessary to go on with what we call fundamen-tal (or basic) science, which is, in my opinion, absolutely

necessary to achieve new scienti�cally interesting results.Moreover I suggest re-visiting, and possibly reconsidering,some basic (classic) concepts concerning Fuzzy Sets andSystems. On the other hand, I think it is now time for in-novation and transfer as well. We should work with thatin mind, in the directions pointed out by the HORIZON2020 European programme by strengthening research inFuture and Emerging Technologies through research, te-chnological development, demonstration and innovation.In my opinion, we, the diversity of research groups wor-king in Fuzzy Sets and Systems, have a great opportunitywithin the HORIZON 2020 programme to work together,which I believe is a must if we want to continue our resear-ch in these topics. For that reason, and using EUSFLATas a common platform for communicating and sharing ourknowledge -which gives us a competitive advantage notfound in other �elds- I think it is necessary to organizeourselves soon and do a call, maybe by organizing a wo-rkshop, in order to coordinate our research lines, bringtogether the teams working in similar topics, and collectfuture trends to ellaborate a joint proposal so we manageto achieve support for the development of research projec-ts within HORIZON 2020. Of special relevance may be tostudy the applications of fuzzy sets and systems to topicssuch as the cyber security, intelligent information manage-ment systems based on advanced data mining, adversarialdecision making, machine learning, statistical analysis andvisual computing technologies.

In any case, let me to say to �nish from my side, thatI'm sure whatever the project to develop in the near futureand beyond, Janusz and me will be once again involved innew proposals and joint scienti�c ventures that will permitus to strengthen our friendship even more.

CURRO VERDEGAYby Pedro Burillo

The Universitary Reform Law, published in Spain inSeptember, 1983, opened the door for modernizing univer-sities, which up to then were anchored in pre-democraticcostumes. In its development, in 1984 knowledge areas we-re created, being de�ned as �those �elds of knowledge cha-racterized by the homogeneity of its purpose, a commonhistorical tradition and the existence of a community ofresearchers, either national or from abroad�. One of thoseareas, that of Computer Science and Arti�cial Intelligence,brought together teachers from di�erent �elds of Scienceand Informatics faculties (later known as Computer Engi-neering Schools), such as Algorithmics, Applied Mathema-tics, Logics, Automata, Computing, Arti�cial Intelligence,

etc. Many of the original sta� came from Sciences Facul-ties, since Informatics Faculties have just recently beencreated, in 1976. This fact allowed me to meet Prof. JoséLuis Verdegay Galdeano (�Curro� for his friends and al-most everybody), as two of the few teachers originally inour area. Although both of us were researchers in the sa-me topic, Fuzzy Sets Theory, we have not met before, sowe could start a common journey that has �nally derivedinto a sincere friendship of which I feel proud. The birthof our knowledge area, and specially its later development-which depended almost solely of the original sta�-, cameassociated to many works in which the role of Prof. Verde-gay has been, in my opinion, crucial. On the one hand, theusual participation in Committes for selecting professorsin the area for the di�erent universities required that we�xed general criteria for choosing the candidates, a verydi�cult point and where consensus was hardly obtained,but the good sense of Prof. Verdegay made agreementspossible, although they were not always respected, as itcould be expected. Moreover it was necessary to carry oncollective actions that made the newly created knowledge


area visible in the Spanish universities: all the professorsin the area made great e�orts to increase the number ofyoung researchers, of Ph. D. Thesis and of conferences,and to boost publications in prestigious journals of the fu-zzy world. And simultaneously to all this work there wasalso academic gestion tasks: probably one of the mostimportant ones was that of the con�guration and develop-ment of the deprtments which, in some cases, were createdaround the Computer Sciences and Arti�cial Intelligenceknowledge area. This was the case in the University ofGranada, were Prof. Verdegay land other colleagues laidtha basis of what would become an excellent department inan excellent university. The academic attraction of peoplelike Prof. Verdegay has made that nowadays, the Depart-ment of Computer Sciences and Arti�cial Intelligence ofthe University of Granada is a worldwide reference on fu-zzy research. At the end of the eighties, an idea that hadbeen considered by many professors in the fuzzy world be-came a reality: the creation of a Spanish Society of Fuzzy

Logic and Technology (FLAT), with Prof. Verdegay as afounder. Such society brought together almost every Spa-nish researcher in fuzzy theory and in 1991 FLAT startedits highest opinion and re�ection tool: The Spanish Con-ference on Fuzzy Logic and Technology (ESTYLF) whose�rst edition was held at the University of Granada. Later,in 1998, FLAT joined to researchers of the rest of Euro-pe to become the European Society for Fuzzy Logic andTechnology (EUSFLAT) in whose foundation Prof. Ver-degay also took part. And many other things, since it isvery di�cult to resulme in a few lines the huge work ofProf. Verdegay in the Computer Sciences and Arti�cialIntelligence knowledge area and bot in the national andin the international fuzzy communities. Work that he hasalways acomplished with great profesionality and a �nesense of humour, and I believe thet the latter is one of themost remarkables notes in his personality. Let it be so formany years!

JANUSZ KACPRZYKby Sªawomir Zadro»ny

Janusz is an institution, both in his home country andworld-wide. It is very di�cult to characterize his researchwork, his organizational achievements, even more di�cultto characterize himself, in a brief note like this one. Thepicture will be always fuzzy, incomplete and imprecise. Heis a man of the vision, a genuine leader and a very modestand friendly person. Janusz has graduated as a controlengineer. No wonder that he was attracted very quicklyby the ideas of Lot� Zadeh, also an accomplished controlengineer. Of course, Janusz himself is a best candidateto tell the story of his research interests, motivations andinspirations, and he does this in a very interesting way inthe interview. Here are just a few impressions and factsconcerning his numerous skills and achievements. Januszis �uent in many languages. He can deliver a speech inFrench, Italian, Spanish, German, Russian, not to men-tion English and Polish. I had a chance to admire hisremarkable ability to switch from one language to anotherwithout any di�culty. And to observe how important isa possibility to communicate with another person in heror his mother tongue. How much easier is to �nd a com-mon understanding of a given problem, either scienti�cor related to everyday life. It surely made Janusz to puthigh on his research agenda the issue of natural langua-ge modeling. The modeling here is meant in the spiritof foundations of fuzzy logic rather than in natural lan-guage processing (NLP) domain. Both lines of research

well complement each other and Janusz's contribution tothe former is very important. In particular, he introducedand/or developed many concepts based on the applicationof the elements of natural language in decision making,data querying and mining or machine learning, to namejust a few areas. Janusz Kacprzyk, born in 1947, gradua-ted in 1970 from the Department of Electronic, WarsawUniversity of Technology in Warsaw, Poland with M.Sc.in automatic control. He received his Ph.D. in systemsanalysis, D.Sc. (habilitation) in computer science fromthe Polish Academy of Sciences, and Full Professor title intechnical sciences, awarded by President of the Republicof Poland. He is a Chairman of the Council of Provosts,Division IV of Engineering Sciences of the Polish Acade-my of Sciences, supervising 13 research institutes and 23national committees. He is Professor of Computer Scien-ce at the Systems Research Institute, Polish Academy ofSciences, and Professor of Automatic Control at: PIAP -Industrial Institute of Automation and Measurements, inWarsaw, Poland, and Department of Electrical and Com-puter Engineering, Cracow University of Technology, inCracow, Poland. He is Honorary Foreign Professor at theDepartment of Mathematics, Yli Normal University, Xin-jiang, China, and Visiting Scientist at the RIKEN BrainResearch Institute in Tokyo, Japan. He is Full Memberof the Polish Academy of Sciences and Foreign Memberof the Spanish Royal Academy of Economic and FinancialSciences (RACEF). He is Fellow of IEEE and IFSA. He hasbeen a frequent visiting professor in the USA, Italy, UK,Mexico and China. He is the author of 5 books, (co)editorof 60 volumes, (co)author of more than 400 papers. Heis the editor in chief of 5 book series at Springer, and theeditor in chief of 2 journals, co-editor and associate editorof 3 journals, and a member of editorial boards of morethan 50 journals. In 2007-2009 he was President of IFSA


(International Fuzzy Systems Association), and currentlyhe is President of the Polish Operational and Systems Re-search Society. He is a member of Award Committee ofIEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS), Adcom(Administrative Committee) of IEEE CIS, and a Distin-guished Lecturer of IEEE CIS. Formerly, he was an alter-nate member of IEEE Fellows Committee. He receivedmany awards, notably: 2006 IEEE CIS Pioneer Award inFuzzy Systems, 2006 Sixth Kaufmann Prize and Gold Me-dal for pioneering works on soft computing in economics

and management, IFSA 2013 Award, 2007 Pioneer Awardof the Silicon Valley Section of IEEE CIS for contributionin granular computing and computing in words, 2000 Au-toSoft Journal Lifetime Achievement Award in recognitionof pioneering and outstanding contributions to the �eld ofsoft computing, 2009 Jubilee Diploma of the BulgarianUnion of Scientists for a long-term collaboration with theinformatics section, and the Award of the 2010 Polish Neu-ral Network Society for exceptional contributions to thePolish computational intelligence community.

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