Richard Jones is Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation and Professor of Physics at the University of Sheffield. His first degree and PhD in Physics both come from Cambridge University, and following postdoctoral work at Cornell University, U.S.A., he was a lecturer at the University of Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory. In 1998 he moved to the University of Sheffield, and in 2006 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He is the author of more than 110 research papers, and three books, the most recent of which is Soft Machines: nanotechnology and life, published by Oxford University Press in 2004. He was the Senior Strategic Advisor for Nanotechnology for the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council from 2007 to 2009, and served on the advisory group for the Royal Society’s recent study “The Scientific Century”.