Carlos G. Vélez-Ibáñez is Regent's Professor at Arizona State University. His work centers on one basic question: How do we as a species manage to survive the enormous stresses of global, national, regional, and local pressures and constraints to live out our lives in a relatively humane manner. The question has underlain all his academic work in urban Mexico, in the Southwestern United States, and in Puerto Rico. He asks more specific questions about the development of cultural "funds of knowledge" as modifiers at different levels: household, community, region, and in non-physical localities. This interest is also tied to questions of adaptation, the distribution of sadness, the emergence of social networks and language change, economic and technical shifts within the structure of households, and the migration of human populations. Professor Vélez-Ibáñez is also interested in the application of knowledge for the benefit of those populations with whom we work.