Tapio Varis, Ph.D., is currently Professor and Chair of Media Education, earlier Media Culture and Communication Education at the University of Tampere, Finland (Research Centre for Vocational Education, and Hypermedia Laboratory), and UNESCO Chair in global e-Learning with applications to multiple domains. He is Acting President of the Global University System (GUS). Formerly he was Rector of the University for Peace in Costa Rica, and Professor of Media Studies at the University of Lapland, Finland. He has been a consultant on new learning technologies for the Finnish Ministry of Education, and expert on media and digital literacy for the EC, Council of Europe, Nordic Research Councils, and many Finnish and foreign universities. He is a member of the European Union's PROMETEUS Steering Committee and Adviser to several international organizations. In 1996-97, he was UNESCO Chair of Communication Studies at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain. He has also been a faculty member of the European Peace University (Austria), Communication and Media Scholar at the University of Helsinki and at the University of Art and Design in Helsinki. He has published approximately 200 scientific contributions which are listed at his Website: <http://www.uta.fi/~titava/publications00.html> with additional biographical information (in Finnish). In 2001 he received The Rochester Intercultural Conferences 1995-2001 award as "an outstanding European scholar in intercultural and international communication." In addition to Finnish, he is fluent in English, Spanish, German, and Swedish.