Chris Justice received his Ph.D. from the University of Reading, United Kingdom, in 1977. In 2001 he became a Professor and Research Director of Geography at the University of Maryland, and in 2010, became the Department Chair (to the renamed Department of Geographical Sciences). He stepped down as in 2021 and in that year was made Distinguished University Professor. Dr. Justice is a Project Scientist for NASA's Land Cover Land Use Change (LCLUC) Program. He is the Land Discipline Leader for the NASA Moderate Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and the Soumi-NPP VIIRS Science Team.  He is Chair of the international GOFC/GOLD Program. He is is co-chair of the GEOGLAM Initiative and Chief Scientist for the NASA HARVEST program.  In Dr. Justice's current research is on land cover and land use change, land observations and data products, global agricultural monitoring, and their associated information technology and decision support systems. In 2010 he received the NASA Exceptional Public Service Medal, In 2014 he received the William T. Pecora Award. In 2020 the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal.