Shashi Shekhar is a leading scholar of spatial computing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Contributions include scalable algorithms for eco-routing, evacuation route planning and spatial pattern (e.g., colocation, linear hotspots) mining, along with an Encyclopedia of GIS, a Spatial Databases textbook, and a and a spatial computing book for professionals. Shashi is a McKnight Distinguished University Professor, a Distinguished University Teaching Professor, ADC Chair at the University of Minnesota (UMN). He is serving an Associate Director of the Data Science Initiative in the UMN College of Science and Engineering. He is also serving as a co-Editor-in-Chief of the Geo-Informatica journal (Springer), a general co-chair of SIAM Data Mining Conference (2023), and a program co-chair of the ACM SIG-SPATIAL Intl. Conference (2022). Earlier, he served as the President of the University Consortium for GIS (UCGIS), and a member of many National Academies' committees and the Computing Research Association (CRA) board. Recognitions include IEEE-CS Technical Achievement Award, UCGIS Education Award, IEEE Fellow and AAAS Fellow.