Dr. Venkataraman Lakshmi graduated from the University of Roorkee in 1987 with a Bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering and a Doctorate in Civil and Environmental Engineering in 1996 from Princeton. He worked at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center from 1996 to 1999 as a research scientist in the Laboratory for the Atmospheres. He is currently the John L. Newcomb Professor of Engineering in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Virginia. He has served as a Cox Visiting Professor at Stanford University in 2006–2007 and 2015–2016 and as Program Director for Hydrologic Sciences at the National Science Foundation (2017–2018). He is also a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), the Geological Society of America (GSA), and the American Society of Agronomy (ASA). His areas of research interest are catchment hydrology, satellite data validation and assimilation, field experiments, land-atmosphere interactions, satellite data downscaling, vadose zone, and water resources.