Jennifer Chayes is Dean of the UC Berkeley College of Computing, Data Science, and Society, the first new college at Berkeley in over half a century. She is also Professor of EECS, Information, Mathematics, and Statistics. For 23 years, she was at Microsoft, most recently as Technical Fellow (CVP), where she co-founded and led three AI + X interdisciplinary labs in Cambridge, MA, NYC, and Montreal. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has received numerous awards and honors, including the 2015 John von Neumann Award of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (the highest honor worldwide in applied mathematics).

Chayes is one of the inventors of graphons, widely used in machine learning of large-scale networks. Her work also includes applications of AI and machine learning to cancer immunotherapy, ethical decision-making, and climate and sustainability. Chayes is cofounder of the startup AIMATX, which uses Generative AI to dramatically accelerate the design and synthesis of materials. Chayes is advisor to several startups in core AI, AI for biotech and biomedicine, and AI for consumer products. Chayes co-led the California Report on Frontier AI Policy for Governor Newsom.