Mohamed Elmasry (S'69-M'73-SM'79-F'88) was born in Cairo, Egypt, on December 24, 1943. He received the B.Sc. degree from Cairo University, in 1965 and the M.A.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada, in 1970 and 1974, respectively, all in electrical engineering. Professor Elmasry was elected a Fellow of Engineering Institute of Canada (FEIC) in 2007 and the Royal Society of Canada (FRSC) in 1998, for "his world-class leadership in the area of Digital Integrated Microchip Design for the last 30 years." In 1997, he was elected a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering (FCAE), for "outstanding scientific, technological, industrial and academic contributions to the area of digital integrated circuits and systems, particularly in VLSI microelectronics." And in 1988, he became a Fellow of the International Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), for his leading contributions to digital integrated circuits. He has worked in the area of digital integrated circuits and system design for the last 35 years. From 1965 to 1968, he was with Cairo University and from 1972 to 1974, Bell-Northern Research, Ottawa. Since 1974, he has been with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada, where, from 1986 to 1991, he held the NSERC/BNR Research Chair in VLSI design and is currently a Professor and founding Director of the VLSI Research Group. He has served as a Consultant to research laboratories in Canada, Japan, and the United States. He has authored and coauthored over 400 papers and 14 books on integrated circuit design and design automation. He has several patents to his credit. He is the founding President of Pico Electronics Inc., Waterloo. He has served in many professional organizations in different positions and received many Canadian and International Awards. He is a Founding Member of the Canadian Conference on VLSI, the Canadian Microelectronics Corporation (CMC), the International Conference on Microelectronics (ICM), MICRONET, and Canadian Institute for Teaching Overseas (CITO).