Ronald Larsen received a BS in Engineering Sciences in 1968 from Purdue University; an MS in 1971 in Applied Physics from The Catholic University of America; and a PhD in 1981 in Computer Science from the University of Maryland, with Prof. Ashok Agrawala as his advisor. His career background includes: mathematician at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, working on real-time mission support systems for the Apollo project and numerous scientific and military missions; management of research programs in automation and robotics for NASA Headquarters; and leading the creation of the agency’s research program in computer science. Ron left NASA to become Assistant Vice President for Computing at the University of Maryland, and subsequently held a number of academic and administrative positions in the University Libraries and the Computer Science department. From 1996 to 1999, he served as Assistant Director of the Information Technology Office (ITO) at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). While at DARPA, he managed research programs in information management, automated language translation, and digital libraries, including the creation of the Translingual Information Detection, Extraction, and Summarization (TIDES) program. From 2002-2017, Ron served as Dean and Professor of the School of Information Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh. During his tenure at Pitt, he served as a founding member of the Information Schools (iSchools) consortium, serving two 2-year terms as its chair. The consortium has grown from a founding group of five universities to more than 120 member institutions world-wide. He retired in 2018 and currently resides in Oakmont, PA.