James C. Spall, a research professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics, is chair of the Applied and Computational Mathematics Program and co-chair of the Data Science Program at the Whiting School of Engineering. A member of the principal professional staff at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, he has published extensively in the areas of control and statistics (including three books) and holds two U.S. patents for inventions in control systems. Among other appointments, he was the program chair for the 2007 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control and was a senior editor for IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control and a contributing editor for the Current Index to Statistics. Spall has received numerous research and publications awards and is a Fellow of IEEE, a member of the American Statistical Association, and a fellow of the engineering honor society Tau Beta Pi. He won the EP Excellence in Teaching Award in 2006 and the Professor Joel Dean Award for Excellence in Teaching in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics in May 2017.