Dana D Dlott received his undergraduate degree from Columbia in 1974 and his Ph.D. from Stanford in 1979. He joined the faculty at the University of Illinois in 1979. He is now the William H. and Janet G. Lycan Emeritus Professor of Chemistry and a Professor of Materials Research there. Dlott is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, OSA, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has been recognized with the ACS award in Experimental Physical Chemistry and the Ellis R. Lippincott Award of the OSA for his work in ultrafast vibrational spectroscopy. He is a former Chair of the APS Topical Group on Shock Compression in Condensed Matter and the author of 325 scientific publications.