Eugene (Gene) Rosa was born in Canandaigua, New York to an immigrant father from Italy and an Italian-American mother. He received all of his education in upstate New York: grade school and high school in East Rochester, a B.S. in Business and Economics at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and a MA and Ph.D. at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. His education continued with post-doctoral positions at Stanford University and the University of Michigan. Gene has been a professor at Washington State University for 35 years, with visiting positions at the London School of Economics, The University of Klagenfurt, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and the University of Stuttgart. His principle research interests are on the topics of human ecology and technological and ecological risks. Many of his publications have won awards and he is a frequent international speaker.