Ilya Mandel received a PhD in physics from the California Institute of Technology in 2008, with a specialization in gravitational-wave astronomy, under the supervision of Kip S. Thorne. He carried out postdoctoral research at Northwestern University and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a National Science Foundation astronomy and astrophysics postdoctoral fellow. Ilya arrived at the University of Birmingham, UK as a Lecturer in 2011, and was promoted to Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics in 2016. During this time, Ilya established himself as one of the leaders in the emerging field of gravitational-wave astrophysics, focusing on sources of gravitational waves, data-analysis challenges posed by current and planned gravitational-wave detectors, astrophysics of compact-object binaries and ways in which upcoming observations of gravitational waves can aid our understanding of this astrophysics. In 2019, Ilya joined Monash University as a Professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy.