Peter J Nordlander earned his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg Sweden in 1985. He held postdoctoral positions at IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, AT&T Bell Laboratories and Rutgers University. He joined the faculty of Rice University in 1989, and he is currently Wiess Chair and Professor. He is a fellow of APS, AAAS, SPIE, OSA, and MRS and is the recipient of the 1999 Charles Duncan Award for Outstanding Academic Achievement, the 2013 Willis E. Lamb Award for Laser Science and Quantum Optics, the 2014 Frank Isakson Prize for Optical Effects in Solids, and the 2015 R.W. Wood Prize from OSA. He has published more than 250 refereed articles, given more than 400 invited presentations at international conferences and workshops, been cited more than 40,000 times with a Web of Science & h-index above 100, and is a Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher in Physics and Chemistry.