The Fourth edition of the  Cajastur Mamdani Prize for Soft Computing was announced in July, during the World Conference in Computational Intelligence in Barcelona. The Jury decided to distinguish Francisco Herrera (Univ. of Granada, Spain)  in consideration of his contributions to the Methodologies and Practice of Evolutionary Learning and Genetic Fuzzy Systems for Intelligent Data Analysis and Control.

The ceremony, which was held on November 15th at the Hotel de la Reconquista in Oviedo, had a large audience and received significant attention from the media. The members of the Scientific Committee of the ECSC, that constitute the jury of the award, were also present as well as the widow of Professor Ebrahim Mamdani (Virginia Mamdani). During the ceremony, the medals of the Foundation for the Advancement of Soft Computing were given to Professor Senén Barro, Dr. Gianguido Rizzotto and (in memoriam) to Professor Ebrahim Madani, being his wife who received the medal.

The ceremony was chaired by Mr. Felipe Fernández, Director General of Cajastur, taking also part Mr. Jesús Alcalde, President of the Foundation for the Advancement of Soft Computing, Dr. Luis Magdalena, Director General of the ECSC, and Dr. Piero Bonissone, Chairman of its Scientific Committee. After receiving the prize, the winner Prof. Francisco Herrera, gave a lecture on "Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing: Imitating nature in the design of intelligent systems."