Donald Cowan is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Waterloo, and Director of the Computer Systems Group. He received his education at the Universities of Toronto (BASc – 1960, Engineering Physics), Waterloo (MSc – 1961 and PhD – 1965, Applied Mathematics) and Guelph (honorary DSc. - 2011). His current academic specializations include software engineering, software applications, and web-based information systems incorporating geomatics. His recent research has focused on the design and implementation of the Web Informatics Development Environment (WIDE) toolkit, which has been used to produce over 70 operational web-based information systems in the areas of environment, community information, economic development, cultural heritage and health. Donald Cowan is the founding Chairman of the Computer Science Department in the Faculty of Mathematics (1967) at the University of Waterloo (now the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science). He is the author or co-author of over 250 refereed papers and 15 books in computer science, computer/communications, software engineering, education, environmental information systems, and mathematics.