J. Kenji López-Alt is the Managing Culinary Director of Serious Eats, a columnist for Cooking Light, and author of the James Beard Award-winning, New York Times Best-Seller, The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science—which was named the International Association of Culinary Professional's Book of the Year for 2015. A Northeast native, Kenji cut his cooking chops the old-fashioned way by working his way up through the ranks of some of Boston's finest restaurants. With an education in science and engineering and as a former Senior Editor at Cook's Illustrated and America's Test Kitchen, Kenji is fascinated by the ways in which understanding the science of every day cooking can help improve even simple foods.