J. Michael Oakes, PhD is a McKnight Presidential Fellow and associate professor in the Division of Epidemiology, University of Minnesota. He is also a fellow of the MN Population Research Center and an adjunct professor of sociology. His professional interests center on quantitative methodology, social epidemiology, and research ethics. He is an active researcher and frequent principal investigator on studies addressing a vast array of methodological, health, and ethical topics. Dr. Oakes has authored over 70 papers exploring problems at the intersection of social and medical sciences; his first text entitled Methods in Social Epidemiology was released in 2006. He is widely known for his seminal work on how social stratification and social interaction complicates inferences drawn from many common research designs and statistical methods in public health research. Among widely cited papers are his 2003 paper on measuring SES and his 2004 and 2007 papers on identification of neighborhood effects. His book chapter on the theory behind and practice of propensity score matching methods in social epidemiology is highly acclaimed. Dr. Oakes teaches several graduate-level courses in statistical methods and social epidemiology, including group-randomized trials and advanced epidemiologic methods. He serves the editorial board of Evaluation Review and is senior scientific advisor for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Healthy Eating Research initiative.