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). Dr. Justice is a Program 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 and is responsible for the MODIS Fire Product. Justice is Chair of the NASA LANCE User Working Group . He is a member of the international GOFC/GOLD-Fire Implementation Team. Dr. Justice is co-chair of the GEOGLAM Initiative and Chief Scientist for NASA HARVEST.  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.