Michael A. Palis received the B.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering (cum laude) and Physics (magna cum laude) from the University of the Philippines in 1979 and 1980, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota in 1985. He is a professor at Rutgers University - Camden, which he joined in 1996 as the founding chair of the Department of Computer Science. Prior to joining Rutgers, he was on the faculties of the New Jersey Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania. At Rutgers - Camden, he served as associate dean for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences from 2005-2007 and as interim dean from 2007-2009. Dr. Palis' research interests include parallel and distributed computing, real-time systems, design and analysis of algorithms, and computational complexity. He is an editor of the Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing and the International Journal of Foundations of Computer Science and has previously served on the editorial boards of the IEEE Transactions on Computers (1994-1997) and the IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (1995-1998). He is a member of the ACM, a senior member of the IEEE, and a fellow of the AAAS.