Fred Wudl received a B.S. (1964) and a Ph.D. (1967) degree from UCLA where his dissertation work was done with Professor Donald J. Cram. After postdoctoral research with R.B. Woodward at Harvard, he joined the faculty of the State University of New York at Buffalo. In 1972 he moved to AT&T Bell Laboratories and subsequently to UCSB in 1982, and then UCLA from 1997 to 2006. He has co-authored over 500 scientific papers and holds 13 U.S. patents. Professor Wudl has received numerous awards including Peter A. Leermakers Lecturer, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1989), the William Rauscher Lecturer in Chemistry Award (Rensselaer Polytechnical Institute (1992), ACS Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award (1993), Stouffer Award (USC, 1993), Arthur D. Little Award (1993), the Giulio Natta Medal of the Italian Chemical Society (1994), The Wheland Medal of University of Chicago (1994), ACS Award for Chemistry of Materials (1996), Alumnus of the Year Award from Los Angeles City College (1996), elected Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2001), Herbert Newby McCoy Award (2001), Honorary Doctors degree, Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain (2004), Professor C.N.R. Rao Lecture Award of CRSI, Honorary Fellow, Council of the Chemical Research Society of India (2005), Merck-Karl Pfister Visiting Professor in Organic Chemistry, MIT (2006), Tolman Medal, ACS Southern California Section (2007), UCLA Professional Achievement Award (2008), Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2010), and Stephanie L. Kwolek Award, Royal Society of Chemistry (2010). More recently he was awarded the Seaborg Medal from UCLA and the Spiers Award and Medal from the Royal Society of Chemistry. The Wudl group is currently interested in the optical and electrooptical properties of processable conjugated polymers as well as in the organic chemistry of fullerenes and the design and preparation of self-mending and self-healing materials.