His current research is focused on fuzzy logic, computing with words and soft computing, which is a coalition of fuzzy logic, neurocomputing, evolutionary computing, probabilistic computing and parts of machine learning. The guiding principle of soft computing is that, in general, better solutions can be obtained by employing the constituent methodologies of soft computing in combination rather than in stand-alone mode. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. He is a recipient of the IEEE Education Medal, the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal, the IEEE Medal of Honor, the ASME Rufus Oldenburger Medal, the B. Bolzano Medal of the Czech Academy of Sciences, the Kampe de Feriet Medal, the AACC Richard E. Bellman Central Heritage Award, the Grigore Moisil Prize, the Honda Prize, the Okawa Prize, the AIM Information Science Award, the IEEE-SMC J. P. Wohl Career Achievement Award, the SOFT Scientific Contribution Memorial Award of the Japan Society for Fuzzy Theory, and other awards and honorary doctorates. We first survey human intelligence that is characterized by the use of language.
Language has two features.
It is social semiotic, and it is also concerned with higher order functions of the brain. This fact enables language to play a role of interfacing the brain with society. In order to develop human language technology, we suggest to apply systemic functional linguistics initiated by Halliday. With this computing environment, people could communicate using the Internet with other humans, agents, computer resources and other social resources with everyday language just as they think and act, and without any particular knowledge of computers. Dr. Sugeno is the recipient of the Pioneer Award from the IEEE Neural Network Council in 2000.