Professor Emeritus in the departments of Language and History at the California University in Los Angeles (UCLA), where he still teaches. There, in 1973, founded the Institute of Archaeology and was its first director until 1983. Also director of IIMAS – the International Institute for the Mesopotamia and the Upper Syria. He published a structural grammar of Babylonian, editions of cuneiforms texts, and several studies on the history, religion, literature and archaeology of Mesopotamia. Also author of important scientific websites. Along with his wife, Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati, Professor Emeritus of the California State University in Los Angeles, he has led excavations and archaeological recognitions in Iraq, Turkey, in the Caucasus but mostly in Syria, where for 25 years they have been directing together the excavations of the old city of Urkesh.