Michael I. Jordan is the Pehong Chen Distinguished Professor in the Department of EECS and the Department of Statistics at the University of California, Berkeley.  His research interests include machine learning, optimization, and control theory.  Prof. Jordan is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering.  He has given a Plenary Lecture  at the International Congress of Mathematicians, and he has received the IEEE John von Neumann Medal, the IJCAI Research Excellence Award, the AMS Ulf Grendander Prize in Stochastic Theory and Modeling, and an Honorary Doctorate from Yale University.