Prof Shyue Ping Ong is a Professor of NanoEngineering at the University of California, San Diego. He obtained his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2011. His group, the Materials Virtual Lab, is dedicated to the interdisciplinary application of machine learning and first principles computations to accelerate materials design. He is a key developer of the Materials Project and the globally-used Python Materials Genomics (pymatgen) materials library. Dr Ong is also a recipient of the US Department of Energy Early Career Research Program and the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program awards.