Mihai Putinar is Professor in the Mathematics Department at the University of California at Santa Barbara and Professor of Pure Mathematics in the School of Mathematics, Statistics and Physics at Newcastle University. Working in the fields of spectral theory, complex analytic geometry and moment problems, he is the author of three books and more than 200 scientific articles. Over the course of his career, he has been awarded prizes including the Simion Stoilow Prize of the Romanian Academy (1987) and the Romanian National Order of Merit with the rank of Knight (2011).