Scientia Iranica D (2011) 18 (3), 682

Sharif University of Technology

Scientia IranicaTransactions D: Computer Science & Engineering and Electrical Engineering

www.sciencedirect.com

Correspondence

A tribute to Lotfi Zadeh on his 90th birthday

I met Professor Zadeh for the first time in his office in1986 when I went there to talk with him about my researchon Uncertainty Management in Artificial Intelligence. This wasonly a few months after I started my work at the NASA AmesResearch Center. Dr. Henry Lum, who hired me to work inhis branch, was interested in bringing Artificial Intelligenceto NASA, and it is an honor for me that Professor Zadeh hasremained a close friend since then. Over the years at NASAAmes, I have invited Lotfi to give lectures at our divisionand, for many years, our group at NASA Ames has supportedhis research. Because of his visionary view on issues, hehas collected a large group of people in disagreement withhim; a famous one being Peter Cheeseman, who happened tobe my colleague at NASA Ames. Peter only believed in theBayesian Probabilistic approach and nothing else. I rememberspending many hours discussing other approaches with him,like Dempster Shafer Evidential Reasoning or Fuzzy Logic orNeural Networks, but nothing would change his mind. So thereI was, a fresh Ph.D. out of school, but needing to fight with PeterCheeseman, who was already a recognized name in AI. ThankGod that Lotfi was there to act as my mentor, with all his latehour phone calls and discussions. Later, I was able to apply myideas to a practical NASA problem [1].

Early on in my research, I discovered Reinforcement Learn-ing. Lotfi encouraged me, and that is why the theory of FuzzyReinforcement Learning [2–6] exists today. His Ph.D. studentsused to come to NASA Ames to work with me on those topics,and many of my papers have been jointly written with them.

In conclusion, I wish Lotfi and his dearwife, Fay,many,manygood years ahead. His critical role in the expansion of the Com-putational Intelligence field is very essential. It is indeed a greatpleasure and an honor forme to have been his friend for the last24 years.

References

[1] Berenji, H., Saraf, S., Chang, P. and Swanson, S. ‘‘Pitch control of the spaceshuttle training aircraft’’, IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology,pp. 542–551 (2001).

[2] Berenji, H.R., Vengerov, D. and Ametha, J. Perception based reinforcementlearning for sensor allocation in unmanned aerial vehicles, The 12th IEEEInternational Conference on Fuzzy Systems (2003).

1026-3098© 2011 Sharif University of Technology. Production and hosting byElsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Peer review under responsibility of SharifUniversity of Technology.

doi:10.1016/j.scient.2011.04.021

[3] Berenji, H.R. and Vengerov, D. ‘‘On convergence of fuzzy reinforcementlearning’’, IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems, (2002).

[4] Berenji, H.R. and Vengerov, D. Convergent actor critic-based fuzzy rein-forcement learning apparatus and method, US Patent, 6,917,925 B2, Filed(Dec. 21, 2001).

[5] Berenji, H.R. and Vengerov, D. Advantages of cooperation between rein-forcement learning agents in difficult stochastic problems, Proceedings ofthe 9th IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems (2000).

[6] Berenji, H.R. and Vengerov, D. Cooperation and coordination betweenteams of fuzzy reinforcement agents, FUZZ-IEEE, Seoul, Korea (1999).

Hamid R. Berenji is the Chief Scientist of the Intelligent Inference SystemsCorporation, which he founded in 1993. He received a B.S. in SystemsEngineering from the Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran in1979, and hisM.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Systems Engineering from theUniversityof Southern California, Los Angeles in 1980 and 1986, respectively.

From 1993 he has been the Chief Research Scientist of the IntelligentInference Systems Corporation, performing research for NASA since 1986. Hehas won several awards including: being elected as IEEE Fellow in 2002,receiving theNASA Certificate of Appreciation for outstanding efforts in supportof the Ames Center of Excellence, Information Technology Strategic PlanWorkshop (April 24, 1996), the Certificate of Recognition for the creativedevelopment of a scientific contribution determined to be of significant valuein the advancement of the aerospace technology program of NASA entitledGeneralized Approximate Reasoning Based Intelligent Control (GARIC) (April 1,1999), the Certificate of Appreciation as a member of the Automation SciencesResearch Dedication Team, the Contractor Certificate of Excellence (October 22,1998), the Certificate of Appreciation awarded in recognition of the outstandingsupport and significant contribution to the 1996 Ames Research Center, NASAScholars, Summer Internship Program (from May, 1996 to September, 1996),the NASA Group Achievement Award to the Ames Community Day Open HouseTeam for outstanding teamwork and dedication in planning, winner of the 1999NASA Space Act award, the NASA Certificate of Appreciation (1992, 1996, and1998), and winner of NASA Ames Director’s Discretionary Fund (1988). He haspublished more than 100 papers in scientific journals and conferences.

Dr. Hamid Berenji’s biography has been printed in the 2007 edition ofMarquis Who’s Who in America and in the 2008 edition of Marquis Who’s Whoin the World.

H. BerenjiIntelligent Inference Systems Corp.,NASA Research Park, MS: 566-108,

Moffett Field, CA 94035, USAE-mail address: berenji@iiscorp.com.

11 July 2010