Is currently the writer and artist of Piled Higher and Deeper, a comic strip about life, or the lack thereof, in academia. Often called "the Dilbert of Academia," PHD has appeared in the Stanford, MIT, Caltech and Carnegie Mellon newspapers, among others, and is published online where it receives over nine million page views a month from over 1000 universities and colleges worldwide. The strip has also appeared or been featured in the journal Nature, the Chronicle of Higher Education, IEEE Potentials magazine, Math Horizons magazine, Stanford Magazine and Canada's The Peer Review magazine among others, and has been linked to by USA Today's, The NY Times and The Washington Post's websites. Four PHD book collections have been published with over 55,000 copies sold.

Jorge Cham was born and raised in the Republic of Panama. He obtained his B.S. from Georgia Tech in 1997 and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Stanford University, specializing in Robotics. He travels and presents all over the world to thousands of graduate students, faculty and administrators on the graduate student experience.

He was a Research Associate at Caltech from 2003-2005 and obtained a Ph.D in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University, specializing in Robotics. His research at Stanford focused on dynamic legged "biomimetic" robots that incorporate novel manufacturing technologies and design lessons from biology. The resulting prototypes are among the fastest recorded running robots ever created (for their size), and achieve robust locomotion with no sensory feedback.

His research at Caltech focused on Neural Prosthetics, specifically the design and manufacture of "Smart" Neural Implants, capable of driving micron-precision motors to actuate electrodes that autonomously find and optimize signals from live neurons.