As the National Science Foundation’s Chief Information Officer (CIO), Dr. George O. Strawn guides the agency in the development and design of innovative information technology—working to enable NSF staff and the international community of scientists, engineers and educators to improve business practices and pursue new methods of scientific communication, collaboration and decision-making.

Since joining the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 1991, Dr. Strawn has served NSF in numerous roles. For the past four years (1999-2002), prior to his appointment as CIO, Dr. Strawn worked in the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), serving three years as the Executive Officer and one year as the Acting Assistant Director. From 1995 through 1998 he was Director of the CISE Division of Advanced Networking Infrastructure and Research where, among other things, he led NSF's efforts in the Presidential Next Generation Internet Initiative, an initiative that created the first national high performance network testbed.

Notably, Dr. Strawn was the NSFNET Program Director from 1991 to 1993, overseeing the progression of the NSFNET backbone network from DS-1 capacity (1.5 megabits per second) to become the first national DS-3 Internet network (45 megabits per second). From 1993 to 1995, he continued in a part-time capacity with NSF and was involved with defining and deploying the "new" (privatized) Internet architecture.

Prior to working at NSF, Dr. Strawn was a computer science faculty member at Iowa State University (ISU) for a number of years, where he also held several administrative positions. From 1986 to 1995 he served as Director of the ISU Computation Center. Under his leadership, ISU became a charter member of the regional NSFNET network, MIDnet, and ISU created a thousand-workstation academic system based on an extension of the MIT Athena system. From 1983 to 1986 he served as Chair of the ISU Computer Science Department. Under his leadership, the computer science program was among the first in the nation to be accredited by the then-new Computer Science Accreditation Board.

Dr. Strawn currently serves as co-chair of both the interagency Large Scale Networking Working Group and the international Coordinating Committee for Intercontinental Research Networks. He has also served as co-chair of the interagency Federal Networking Council from 1995 to 1997.

Dr. Strawn also has held several positions in the computer industry and has worked as an information technology consultant in both private industry and government. He holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Iowa State University and an undergraduate degree from Cornell College.