Venkatachalam “Ram” Ramaswamy is Director of NOAA Oceanic and Atmospheric Research’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL), located in Princeton, NJ. Ram received his undergraduate degree in Physics from Delhi University (India), and Ph. D. in Atmospheric Sciences from the State University of New York at Albany. He was a postdoctoral Fellow in the Advanced Study Program at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO. Ram joined GFDL in 1985, and was a Senior Scientist (2000-2008) before becoming Director of GFDL and joining the Federal Senior Executive Service. He is also a Lecturer with the rank of Professor in the Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Program at Princeton University where he teaches a graduate course in atmospheric physics and mentors students and postdocs. His principal interests are numerical modeling of the Earth System, and the understanding of climate forcings, feedbacks, and responses using models and observations. Ram directs one of the world’s premier climate modeling centers, addressing the NOAA mission to develop and apply numerical models for predicting and projecting global-to-regional climate.