Joel A. Tropp is Professor of Applied & Computational Mathematics at the California Institute of Technology. He earned his PhD degree in Computational Applied Mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin in 2004. Dr. Tropp’s work lies at the interface of applied mathematics, electrical engineering, computer science, and statistics. This research concerns the theoretical and computational aspects of data analysis, sparse modeling, randomized linear algebra, and random matrix theory. Dr. Tropp has received several major awards for young researchers, including the 2007 ONR Young Investigator Award and the 2008 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. He is also the winner of the 6th Vasil A. Popov prize and the 2011 Monroe H. Martin prize.