Beatrice Lazzerini visited the College of Arts and Sciences in October 2006 to kick off the 2006-2007 Distinguished Visiting Scholars program.  During her stay at the College, Lazzerini gave two public lectures, "Some Like it Soft: Fundamentals of Soft Computing" and "Soft Computing: Basics and Applications."  She made contact with a number of students; visited the freshman seminar, "History of Computing and Computers"; held open office hours for all students; and discussed special lab projects with the Math and Computer Science Department. 

Lazzerini received the Laurea degree in Computer Science from the University of Pisa and the Laurea degree in Computer Engineering from the University of of Florence.  Currently she is a full professor at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Pisa, Italy where she teaches "Intelligent Systems."  Her research focus lies in the area of Computational Intelligence, with a concentration in fuzzy systems, neural networks and evolutionary computatioin.  She is the co-author of seven books and has published more than 130 papers in interantional journals and conferences.