Oscar H. Ibarra received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of the Philippines in 1962 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees, also in Electrical Engineering, from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1965 and 1967, respectively. He is a Professor and past Chair of the Department of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He was previously with the faculties of UC Berkeley (1967-1969) and the University of Minnesota (1969-1990).

Dr. Ibarra's research interests include the design and analysis of algorithms, the theory of computation, computational complexity, and parallel computing. He is a past recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, and the recipient of the IEEE Computer Society's Harry Good Memorial Award for 2001. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and the Minnesota Supercomputer Institute.

Dr. Ibarra is the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Foundations of Computer Science. He is on the editorial boards of Theoretical Computer Science, Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, and Journal of Computing and Information. He has also served on the editorial boards of the IEEE Transactions on Computers, IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, and Journal of VLSI Signal Processing. He is on the advisory board of the IEEE Technical Committee on Parallel Processing.