GIORGIO GUARISO was born in Milan, Italy, in 1953 and he graduated with honors in Electronic Engineering at the Politecnico di Milano in 1976. He has been assistant professor at the same institution in 1977 and he has been working as “system analyst” at the Egyptian Academy for Research and Technology, Cairo, Egypt, from 1977 to 1979. Later on, he has been working with the Italian National Research Council and he became associate professor of Systems Analysis at the Department of Electronics and Information, Politecnico di Milano, in 1987. From 1994 he is full professor at the same department, where he is presently teaching courses on modelling and simulation. His research activities have always been centered on the development of environmental models and decision support systems. He has been working with the International Institute for Applied System Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria and has participated and organized several continuing education courses on environmental management. He has chaired the IFIP working group 5.11 on “Computers and environment” from 1991 to 1999. He is associate editor of the Elsevier Journal “Environmental Modelling and Software”, he was President and then vice-president from 2006 to 2008 of the International Modelling and Software Society. He has coordinated many national and international research projects including the creation of a computer laboratory for environmental sciences at the Technical University of Warsaw (EU Tempus Project) and the development of a multimedia tool for environmental modelling (EU GAIA Project) and other projects with the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, ENEA, CNR and Regione Lombardia. He has published more than 100 technical papers on national and international journals and conferences, including two international books and two CD-ROMs with catalogues of environmental models. From 2007 to 2010 he was a member of the Board of Directors of the Politecnico di Milano and from January 2011 and is Chairman of the "Consiglio di Corso di Studi" in Environmental and Geomatic Engineering at Como Campus of the Politecnico.