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Bjorn Poonen received an A.B. in Mathematics and Physics from Harvard in 1989 and a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Kenneth Ribet at U.C. Berkeley in 1994. Poonen has had postdoctoral positions at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) and Princeton University. He has served on the faculty at U.C. Berkeley before moving to MIT in 2008. His research focuses on number theory and algebraic geometry, particularly in developing methods to determine rational number solutions to multivariable polynomial equations and proving undecidable problems. He is a founding managing editor of Algebra & Number Theory and has served on the editorial board of several journals. Prior to joining MIT, Poonen received numerous fellowships, including Guggenheim, Packard, Rosenbaum, Simons, and Sloan. He is a four-time winner of the Putnam Competition. In 2011, he received the Chauvenet Prize for his article "Undecidability in Number Theory," published in Notices AMS. He received the MIT School of Science Prize in Undergraduate Teaching in 2014 and was awarded the Simons Fellowship in Mathematics in 2015. In 2016, Poonen was elected to the AMS Nominating Committee for a three-year term. He was also awarded the AMS Doob Prize in 2023 for his research-level mathematics book on Rational Points on Varieties.