Welcome to the Fall 2009 volume of LIDS|ALL. As in past issues, we have assembled a set of interviews and news that provide a picture of the LIDS community in all of its dimensions. LIDS is an exciting and world-leading research organization that plays a very important intellectual and educational role within MIT, and we are delighted to share these glimpses into our professional home.

In this issue you’ll be introduced to two of our current graduate students, Sertac Karaman and Myung Jin Choi. Sertac has been one of the most active student leaders at LIDS, serving as an organizer and participant in the annual LIDS Student Conference, and as a lead in an effort to collect images of LIDS through the years. Jin Choi is another active member of the LIDS community, who, in addition to working on the LIDS Student Conference, has a record of broader service through MIT’s Africa Information Technology Initiative as well as in her role as an EECS peer counselor.

In addition, you’ll meet one of our distinguished alumni, Dr. Dan Grunberg. Dan is a dynamic entrepreneur who remains a strong and contributing friend to LIDS, as well as a friend to MIT more generally as a member of the MIT Museum’s Advisory Board.

You’ll also read about Lynne Dell, one of the dedicated members of our administrative staff, whose warm presence adds as much to the LIDS community as her tireless efforts in ensuring that activities such as the LIDS Student Conference run like clockwork. Lynne is also the latest member of our staff to receive recognition from the School of Engineering as a recipient of an Infinite Mile Award this past spring.

This issue also contains interviews with two of our faculty members. You’ll be introduced to Moe Win, currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and a world-recognized leader in ultra-wide bandwidth communication and allied fields (and whose experiments and sensing devices have become permanent parts of the LIDS environment). You will also read about one of our most distinguished senior faculty members, Sanjoy Mitter, a former Director of LIDS and currently Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. In addition to enjoying a well-deserved international reputation for his many broad and deep research contributions, Sanjoy has been and continues to be a leader within LIDS in charting and pursuing the scientific agenda that we all find so exciting and fulfilling.

As I stated in last fall’s issue it would be wrong to say simply that LIDS is enriched because of activities and people such as these. LIDS exists because of activities and people like these. Thanks to them and the others in our community, LIDS stands as a world-leading center for research in information and decision systems and all of the academic disciplines that are crucial to this broad area of inquiry.

And there is more on the way: We have now assembled an external Advisory Committee, consisting of four very distinguished research and educational leaders: Dr. Henrique Malvar, Director of Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, Professor Manfred Morari of ETH, Zurich, Switzerland, Prof. H. Vincent Poor of Princeton University, and Prof. Pravin Varaiya of UC Berkeley. The Committee visited us in early May 2009 and engaged in an intensive set of meetings and activities, including talks by some of our faculty, private meetings with students and postdocs, and a very successful and enjoyable poster session. The Committee was complimentary to all in LIDS and provided us both encouragement and advice as we continue to enhance the LIDS community. Indeed, that these four leaders have been willing to give of their time and energy to listen to and advise us speaks volumes for what LIDS is and what it will remain. On top of that, we’re planning a major Symposium for later this fall which you can learn about now at http://paths.lids.mit.edu and which you will undoubtedly read about in next year’s LIDS|ALL.

Sincerely,