I am a mathematician with a wide range of interests ranging from combinatorics and algebraic geometry to optimization and computational biology. I have always been fascinated with numerical experiments and data analysis, and this led me quite naturally into the emerging field of algebraic statistics. Here, I have worked on phylogenetics, Markov bases, symbolic computation of Bayesian integrals, likelihood inference, and the geometry of conditional independence models for discrete and Gaussian random variables.

I received doctoral degrees in Mathematics in 1987 from the University of Washington, Seattle, and the Technical University Darmstadt, Germany. After my postdoctoral years in Minneapolis and Linz, Austria, I taught at Cornell University, before joining UC Berkeley in 1995, where I am now a Professor of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science. My honors include a National Young Investigator Fellowship, a Sloan Fellowship, a David and Lucile Packard Fellowship, a Clay Senior Scholarship, an Alexander von Humboldt Senior Research Prize, the SIAM von Neumann Lecturership, and a Sarlo Distinguished Mentoring Award. Recently, I served as Vice President of the American Mathematical Society. As a leading experimentalist among mathematicians, I have also authored ten books and over 200 research articles in the areas of combinatorics, algebraic geometry, symbolic computation, and their applications. I have mentored 50 doctoral students and numerous postdocs, and my current research focuses on algebraic statistics and computational algebraic geometry.