Robert A. Holman received the Ph.D. degree from Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada, in 1979.
He is currently a Professor in the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, studying the world's beaches and nearshore processes. The range of scales of interest on Oregon's local beaches slowly forced him to adopt video remote sensing techniques to studies of the nearshore, in contrast to the traditional in situ sensor approach. With his students, he has continued to develop these techniques to a quantitative science.