Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, 1972, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA. Alexander A. Sawchuk was born in Washington, DC. He received the S.B. degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University. He has been with the University of Southern California since 1971, where he is currently Leonard Silverman Chair Professor in the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering, and was Systems Chair of the Department from 2006-2012. He is also Associate Director of the Signal and Image Processing Institute (SIPI). He has served in the past as Director of the Signal and Image Processing Institute for more than ten years, and as Deputy Director of the Integrated Media Systems Center. He has served as consultant or advisor to a number of technical companies, including the Aerospace Corporation, Hughes, TRW, Litton, Phaethon Communications and EdgeWave Corporation. He is a founder of Optivision, Inc. and ONI Systems (now part of Ciena Corp.).