John Tinsley Oden, PhD, is Associate Vice President for Research and Director of the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences (ICES) at The University of Texas at Austin. He was the founding Director of the Institute, which was created in January of 2003 as an expansion of the Texas Institute for Computational and Applied Mathematics. A member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, the National Academies of Engineering of Mexico and of Brazil, and The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he serves on numerous national and international organizational, scientific, and advisory committees including the NSF Blue Ribbon Panel on Simulation-Based Engineering Science and the Task Force on Cyber Science and Grand Challenge Communities and Virtual Organizations. Dr. Oden has worked extensively on the mathematical theory and implementation of numerical methods applied to problems in solid and fluid mechanics and, particularly, nonlinear continuum mechanics and, in recent years, multi-scale modeling, stochastic systems, and uncertainty quantification.