  Nuclear theory has entered an exciting era. This is due to advances on many
fronts, including the development of effective field theory and the
renormalization group for nuclear forces, advances in ab-initio methods for
nuclear structure, an effort to develop a universal density functional based on
microscopic interactions, and the application of large-scale computing
resources. I discuss their impact, recent highlights and the frontiers in
understanding and predicting nuclei and the structure of strongly-interacting
matter based on chiral interactions.
