Professor Timothy Schmidt was educated at The University of Sydney, winning the University Medal for Theoretical Chemistry in 1997. He undertook his PhD at The University of Cambridge in the field of femtosecond spectroscopy under the supervision of the late Dr Gareth Roberts. He was a postdoctoral research associate of Prof. Dr John Paul Maier, FRS in Basel, Switzerland, where he researched highly unsaturated hydrocarbon molecules of astrophysical relevance. Tim returned to Australia in 2003 to take up a position at CSIRO researching artificial photosynthesis. He was appointed as a lecturer in the School of Chemistry at The University of Sydney in 2004 and there rose to Associate Professor before moving to UNSW in 2014 as Professor and ARC Future Fellow. At UNSW he is Research Director of the School of Chemistry and Chief Investigator of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Exciton Science. Professor Schmidt has been the recipient of a number of awards for his research including the Coblentz Award (2010) for contributions to the science of molecular spectroscopy. His current research interests include astrochemical spectroscopy, molecular excitonics and renewable energy, and electronic structure theory.