From its inception (1952) well over half a century ago, the Faculty Research Lecturer Award has been the highest honor that the University of California at Riverside (UCR) Academic Senate bestows. Distinguished Professor Bir Bhanu, Marlan and Rosemary Bourns Endowed Presidential Chair in Engineering is the first member of the faculty of the Bourns College of Engineering (BCOE) to receive this award in the 29 years of the existence of the College. Dr. Bhanu made history in this way because he was among the founding faculty members of the Bourns College of Engineering at UCR—a college that has been an outstanding addition to the UCR campus, and is widely recognized as a first-rate school of engineering. Professor Bhanu is an internationally known and highly regarded researcher in the development of “intelligent systems”—systems that contribute both to understanding human intelligence and offer help in the development of practical applications to engineering and societal needs. He is the founding Director of the Center for Research in Intelligent Systems (CRIS) and the founding Chair of Electrical Engineering at UCR. He has received many prestigious awards in his areas of research, including being elected as a Fellow of AAAS, IEEE, SPIE, IAPR and AIMBE. He was a Senior Fellow at Honeywell Inc. before he started at UCR. In addition to his extraordinary research productivity and service to the BCOE at UCR, Professor Bhanu has maintained a very active level of teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. He received UCR’s Doctoral Dissertation Mentor Award in 2011. Professor Bhanu has exhibited all of the virtues of an academic leader: research productivity and international influence and respect, outstanding teaching and mentorship at all levels, and remarkable service. For these reasons and more (too numerous to mention), the Academic Senate Committee on the Faculty Research lecture, unanimously and enthusiastically nominated Distinguished Professor Bir Bhanu as the Faculty Research Lecturer for 2019-2020 which has been approved by the academic senate meeting held on May 21, 2019.