Alfredo Ruiz-Barradas was born in the city of Xalapa, Veracuz, Mexico in February 1964. While living in his hometown, he got a bachelor degree in Atmospheric Sciences by the Universidad Veracruzana in 1987. Then he moved to Mexico City where he got a master degree in Geophysics by the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de M&ecaute;xico (UNAM) in 1991. After completion of this degree Alfredo was hired as a research assistant by UNAM's Centro de Ciencias de la Atósfera, a research center for the atmosphere. His job there was assisting in numerical experiments with the so called Adem's Thermodynamic Climate Model; mostly, experiments to assess and improve the model's skill at predicting monthly and seasonal precipitation over Mexico. He worked in that position for Dr. Julián Adem until August 1995, when he left to begin his doctoral studies at the University of Maryland. Alfredo got his doctoral degree in Meteorology in the spring of 2001 studying interannual climate variability in the tropical Atlantic under the advice of Dr. J. Carton and Dr. S. Nigam. He was appointed immediately as a Research Associate in the Department of Meteorology of the University of Maryland working for Dr. S. Nigam on diagnosing the role of oceans on variability of the summer precipitation over the US. This appointment ended in July 2004 when he was promoted to Assistant Research Scientist expanding his initial research to understand the structure and mechanisms of North American warm-season hydroclimate variability, and to include topics like Pacific Decadal variability as well as structure and mechanisms of tropical Atlantic variability. Then Dr. Ruiz-Barradas was promoted to Associate Research Professor in October 2014 after helping several doctoral students to graduate, and co-directing one of them, achieving research accomplishments and sustained scholarly and creative endeavors that have advanced the Department's footprint and stature in the field of North American hydroclimate variability and change. He was apointed as the Maryland State Climatologist in July 2021 with the task of making this Office more visible across the State and be central to all discussions of regional climate variability and change.