Charles (Chuck) Alpert received two undergraduate degrees from Stanford University in 1991 and his doctorate from UCLA in 1996 in Computer Science. Upon graduation, Chuck joined IBM's Austin Research Laboratory where he remains still. He currently manages the Design Productivity Group, whose mission is to architect design automation tools and methodologies to improve designer productivity and reduce design cost. Chuck has published over 100 conference and journal papers and has thrice received the Best Paper Award from the ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference. He has been active in the academic community, serving as chair for the Tau Workshop on Timing Issues and the International Symposium on Physical Design. For the last decade, he has served as associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design, before stepping down in 2012. For his work in mentoring, he received the Mahboob Khan Mentor Award in 2001 and 2007. He was also named IEEE Fellow in 2005.