Dr. John H. Falk is Sea Grant Free-Choice Science Learning Professor, Oregon State University and president emeritus of the Institute for Learning Innovation, an Annapolis, Maryland-based non-profit learning research and development organization. He is known internationally for his research on free-choice learning; the learning that occurs in leisure settings like museums, parks, and on the Internet. Dr. Falk has authored over one hundred scholarly articles and chapters in the areas of learning, biology and education, more than a dozen books, as well as helped to create several nationally important out-of-school educational curricula. Before joining the faculty at Oregon State University, he founded and directed the Institute for Learning Innovation for twenty years and prior to that worked at the Smithsonian Institution for fourteen years where he held a number of senior positions including Special Assistant for Education to the Assistant Secretary for Science and Director, Smithsonian Office of Educational Research. Dr. Falk received a joint doctorate in Biology and Education from the University of California at Berkeley. He also earned MA and BA degrees in Zoology and a secondary teaching credential in biology and chemistry from the same institution.