George Furnas got his A.B. degree from Harvard ('74) and his Ph.D. from Stanford ('80) and then spent 15 years in research at Bell Labs and Bellcore, where he became Director of Computer Graphics and Interactive Media research. In 1995 he joined the faculty of the University of Michigan, with appointments at the School of Information and the College of Engineering (Computer Science and Engineering). A principal focus of his research has been in the interdisciplinary area of human computer interaction, specializing in advanced information access and visualization, but he has also published work in multivariate statistics and graphical reasoning. Some of his past specific contributions include the developments in Statistical Semantics, Adaptive Indexing, Latent Semantic Indexing, Generalized Fisheye Views, Graphical Deduction Systems, Prosection (hi-dim visualization technique) , Collaborative Filtering, Multitrees, and Space-Scale Diagrams.