Jin-Yi Cai studied at Fudan University (class of 1977). He continued his studies at Temple University and Cornell University, where he received his PhD in 1986. He has held faculty positions at Yale University (1986-1989), Princeton University (1989-1993), and SUNY Buffalo (1993-2000), rising to Full Professor in 1996. He is currently a Professor of Computer Science and Steenbock Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Cai received a Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1990, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship in Computer Science in 1994, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 1998, and a Morningside Silver Medal of Mathematics in 2004. He also received the Humboldt Research Award for Senior US Scientists. He has been elected a Fellow of the ACM and AAAS. Cai is an Editor of the Journal of Computer and Systems Sciences (JCSS), International Journal of Foundations of Computer Science, and Chicago Journal of Theoretical Computer Science, an Associate Editor of the Journal of Complexity, and an Area Editor for the International Journal of Software and Informatics. He works in computational complexity theory. Cai has written and published over 100 research papers.