Mike Steel is a Professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, where he is also Director of the Biomathematics Research Centre. He is an elected fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand and a recipient of the New Zealand Mathematical Society's annual Research Award. His research interests include combinatorics and random processes, and their applications to questions in evolutionary biology and related areas of sciences, specifically phylogenetic theory and methods. Additional research interests include autocatalytic networks in the origin of life, inverting random functions in mathematical statistics, and questions in the philosophy of science concerning causality and information loss. He has published approximately 240 academic papers, co-authored two books on phylogenetics, and served as associate editor of various journals, including the Bulletin of Mathematical Biology and Systematic Biology.