Prof Bernd Sturmfels is a Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley and is a director of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Leipzig since 2017. His awards include a David and Lucile Packard Fellowship, a Clay Senior Scholarship, a Humboldt Senior Research Prize, the SIAM von Neumann Lecturership, the Sarlo Distinguished Mentoring Award, and the George David Birkhoff Prize in Applied Mathematics. He is a fellow of the AMS and SIAM, and a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. He has authored 10 books and more than 250 research articles in combinatorics, commutative algebra, algebraic geometry, and their applications to fields like statistics, optimization, and computational biology. His research interests are in Algebraic Geometry, Combinatorics, Commutative Algebra, Algebraic Statistics, Convex Optimization, Computational Biology.