Elected Academician of the International Eurasian Academy of Sciences in 2003, Professor Changchui He is a distinguished Chinese remote sensing and geographic information scientist whose career has combined geospatial science with international development, natural-resource management, and multilateral governance. Born in 1949 in Qianhua Village, Jiangjing Town, Fuqing, Fujian Province, he graduated from Fuqing No. 1 Middle School in 1968 and received his degree from the Department of Physics and Radio at Fuzhou University in 1975. He subsequently served as an Assistant Researcher at the Institute of Remote Sensing Applications, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), from 1975 to 1982. In 1979, he became the first Chinese scholar to undertake government-sponsored overseas study in remote sensing, receiving his M.Sc. from the International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), the Netherlands, in 1982. He earned his Ph.D. from the Department of Urban and Environmental Sciences at Peking University in 1994. From 1983 to 1988, he held senior positions at the State Science and Technology Commission, including Deputy Director of the Bureau of Basic Research and New Technology. In 1988, he joined the United Nations system, where he served for 25 years until his retirement in 2013. At the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), he served as Regional Remote Sensing Project Director and, from 1988 to 1998, founding Director of the Space Applications Division. He subsequently joined the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), where from 1998 to 2013 he held a succession of senior positions, including Director of the Resources and Environment Division, Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for Asia and the Pacific at the rank of UN Assistant Secretary-General, and Deputy Director-General from 2009 at the rank of UN Under-Secretary-General. He was the first Chinese national