Robert L. Ryan, FASLA is Department Chair and professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he teaches courses on landscape planning and assessment, environment and behavior, and green infrastructure planning.  Dr. Ryan’s research projects have focused on the local residents and visitors’ attitudes toward natural resource and open space planning.  Many of these studies have used landscape preference methodology to have different stakeholder group’s rate visual quality.  A key part of this work has been to understand the landscape patterns that are both ecologically beneficial, as well as perceived as beautiful by local residents.   Dr. Ryan is the co-principal investigator of the Boston Metropolitan Area Urban Long-term Research Project (ULTRA), a NSF funded study to explore the relationship between socio-economic forces and urban ecosystem patterns and processes across a metropolitan region.  He has conducted land use and open space planning studies for over twenty-five towns in New England for which he won the Outstanding Outreach Teaching award from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.  In addition, he is the co-author with Rachel and Stephen Kaplan of the award-winning book, With People in Mind: Design and Management of Everyday Nature (Island Press, 1998). This book was written to bridge the gap between visual landscape preference research and the practice of natural resource planning and management.  He serves on the Editorial Board of the international journal, Landscape and Urban Planning, and was a technical advisor to the ASLA’s Sustainable Sites Initiative Human Health and Well-being Technical sub-committee.  Professor Ryan holds a PhD in Natural Resources (Environment and Behavior Concentration), Master in Landscape Architecture and Master of Urban Planning degrees from the University of Michigan and Bachelor of Science in Landscape Architecture from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.