Dr. Chang received the B.S. degree from National Taiwan University in 1965. He received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1967 and 1969, respectively. He was a research scientist at IBM Watson Research Center from 1969 to 1975. From 1975 to 1982 he was Associate Professor and then Professor at the Department of Information Engineering, University of Illinois at Chicago. From 1982 to 1986 he was Professor and Chairman of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Illinois Institute of Technology. From 1986 to 1991 he was Professor and Chairman of the Department of Computer Science, University of Pittsburgh. He is currently Professor and Director of Center for Parallel, Distributed and Intelligent Systems, University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Chang is a Fellow of IEEE. He was a consultant to IBM, Bell Laboratories, Standard Oil, Honeywell, Naval Research Laboratory and Siemens. His research interests include distributed multimedia systems, visual information systems, visual languages and visual computing. Dr. Chang has published over two hundred and forty papers and wrote or edited twelve books. His books, Principles of Pictorial Information Systems Design (Prentice-Hall, 1989), Principles of Visual Programming Systems (Prentice-Hall, 1990), Symbolic Projection for Image Information Retrieval and Spatial Reasoning (Academic Press, 1996) and Multimedia Software Engineering (Kluwer, 2000), are pioneering advanced textbooks in these research areas. Dr. Chang is the Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Visual Languages and Computing published by Academic Press, the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Software Engineering & Knowledge Engineering and Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Computer Processing of Oriental Languages both published by World Scientific Press, and Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Distance Education Technologies published by Idea Group Publishing. In 1978 Dr. Chang founded Knowledge Systems Institute, which is a graduate school dedicated to advanced education in computer and information sciences. The Institute was accredited in 1991 by North Central Association of Colleges and Schools. Knowledge Systems Institute is a model institute of higher learning realizing Dr. Chang's vision to revive the tradition of Chinese scholarly school (Shu-Yuan) as an educational institution. Dr. Chang's literary activities include the writing of twenty eight novels, collection of short stories and critical essays. His novels were translated into English, German, Japanese, and made into musical play, movie and TV series. He is regarded to be the "Father of Science Fiction" in Taiwan, his mainstream short stories and novels also receiving critical acclaim.