Larry Mays has been a professor at the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment at Arizona State University since 1989. He served as chair from 1989-1996. Prior to that he was director of the Center for Research in Water Resources and holder of an Engineering Foundation Endowed Professorship at the University of Texas at Austin, where he was on the faculty since 1976. Mays has published his works extensively with more than 130 refereed journal publications; 24 books as author, co-author or editor-in-chief; more than 112 national and international proceeding papers and research reports; and 66 chapters in the books that he was editor-in-chief. He teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses in the area of hydrosystems enginering and has supervised 38 doctoral students, and many master's students with theses and many M.S.E. students. 

His research interests, water resources sustainability, real-time operation of water resources systems, ancient water technologies and hydrologic and hydraulic modeling.