David Eisenbud received his PhD in mathematics in 1970 at the University of Chicago under Saunders MacLane and Chris Robson, and was on the faculty at Brandeis University before joining the University of California, Berkeley, where he has been professor of Mathematics since 1997.  He served as Director of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) in Berkeley from 1997 to 2007, and has recently begun a second term in this role. Eisenbud has been a visiting professor at Harvard University and a research professor at the University of Bonn in Germany, at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques in France and also at the Institut Henri Poincaré. Eisenbud was president of the American Mathematical Society from 2003 to 2005. He is now a director at Math for America, a foundation devoted to improving mathematics teaching. He chairs the editorial board of the journal Algebra and Number Theory, which he helped establish in 2006, and serves on several other editorial boards. Eisenbud has been a member of the board of Mathematical Sciences and their Applications (part of the National Research Council), and is a member of the U.S. National Committee of the International Mathematical Union. In 2006, he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Eisenbud’s major research contributions have focused on the study of algebraic curves and their moduli, and on the commutative algebra and algebraic geometry related to free resolutions. His mathematical interests also include topology and computer methods.