Chris Bishop is a Distinguished Scientist at Microsoft Research Cambridge, where he leads the Machine Learning and Perception group. He is also Professor of Computer Science at the University of Edinburgh, and Vice President of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and a Fellow of Darwin College Cambridge. His research interests include probabilistic approaches to machine learning, as well as their practical application. Chris is the author of the leading textbook “Neural Networks for Pattern Recognition” (Oxford University Press, 1995) which has over 15,000 citations, and which helped to bring statistical concepts into the mainstream of the machine learning field. His latest textbook “Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning” (Springer, 2006) has over 4,000 citations, and has been widely adopted. In 2008 he presented the 180th series of annual Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, with the title “Hi-tech Trek: the Quest for the Ultimate Computer”, to a television audience of close to 5 million.