Ramón López de Mantaras is an electrical engineer from Mondragon University in Spain and a pioneer of artificial intelligence in Spain, with contributions since 1976 in pattern recognition, AI and music, approximate reasoning, expert systems, machine learning, case-based reasoning, and autonomous robots. He is the founder and former director of the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute and a research professor emeritus of the Spanish National Research Council. Ramón has authored nearly 300 papers. He is the former editor-in-chief of AI Communications, former associate editor of the Artificial Intelligence journal, and editorial board member of several top international journals. An invited plenary speaker at numerous international conferences, Ramón serves on various panels and advisory committees for public and private institutions based in the USA and Europe on AI-related issues. He is a fellow of the European Association for Artificial Intelligence and co-recipient of five best paper awards at international conferences. In 1981, Ramón won the City of Barcelona Research Prize. In 2011, he won the American Association of Artificial Intelligence Robert S. Engelmore Memorial Award, and in 2012, the Spanish National Computer Science Award from the Spanish Computer Society. In 2016, he won the Distinguished Service Award of the European Association of Artificial Intelligence and then the 2017 International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization Donald E. Walker Distinguished Service Award. In 2018, Ramón won the National Research Award of Spain in Mathematics and Information and Communications Technology for being a pioneer in the study of AI and for his international leadership in this discipline. He is also a member of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans.Ramón has his Master of Science in computer science from the University of California Berkeley, a doctorate in physics from the University of Toulouse in France, and a doctorate in computer science from the Technical University of Barcelona. He enjoys rollerblading and playing jazz piano.