Jesse Thaler is a theoretical particle physicist who fuses techniques from quantum field theory and machine learning to address outstanding questions in fundamental physics. He received his PhD from Harvard in 2006, was a Research Fellow at the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science at UC Berkeley from 2006 to 2009, and then joined the MIT Physics Department in 2010. He was awarded a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from the White House in 2012, a fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in 2013, and a Harold E. Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award from MIT in 2016. In 2020, Jesse became the inaugural Director of the NSF Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions.