Shashi Shekhar, a McKnight Distinguished University Professor at the University of Minnesota and an U.C. Berkeley alumnus, is a leading scholar of spatial computing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). He is serving as the President of the University Consortium for GIS, a member of the Computing Research Association (CRA) board, and a co-Editor-in-Chief of Geo-Informatica journal (Springer). Earlier, he served on many National Academies' committees. Recognitions include IEEE-CS Technical Achievement Award, UCGIS Education Award, IEEE Fellow and AAAS Fellow. Contributions include algorithms for evacuation route planning and spatial pattern (e.g., colocation, linear hot-spots) mining, an Encyclopedia of GIS and a Spatial Databases textbook.