Prof. Gary Shiu received his PhD degree in Physics from Cornell University in 1998. He has held research appointments at the C.N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics at Stony Brook, and the University of Pennsylvania before joining the faculty of the University of Wisconsin, Madison where he is currently Professor of Physics. Prof. Shiu's research interests span a wide range of areas in string theory, high energy physics, and cosmology, with an emphasis on connecting fundamental theory to experiments. Among the honors he received include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Cottrell Scholar Award, a Research Corporation Innovation Award, and a National Science Foundation Career Award. He was also named a Kavli Frontiers Fellow by the National Academy of Sciences, and a Vilas Faculty Associate. He has held visiting professorships at Stanford University and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. He was appointed the Johannes Diderik van der Waals Chair at the University of Amsterdam in 2012. He currently holds a Chair Professorship in Physics at HKUST. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and a Fellow of the Institute of Physics.