George Michailidis is a Professor of Statistics at UCLA. Previously, he served as the founding Director for the U Florida Informatics Institute, and before that, he was a Professor of Statistics and EECS at the University of Michigan. His research interests are in the modeling and analysis of high dimensional data, developing optimization algorithms for machine learning models, and stochastic control problems. Applications of research include analysis of Omics data, as well as studying computer, communication, transportation, social and financial networks. He is an ASA, IMS, and ISI Fellow and a former Editor-in-Chief of the Electronic Journal of Statistics.