Gabriel Aeppli is the Quain Professor of Physics and the Director of the London Centre for Nanotechnology. Prior to taking up these posts in the autumn of 2002, he was a Senior Research Scientist for NEC (Princeton), a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Bell Laboratories, a Research Assistant at MIT, and an industrial co-op student at IBM. He obtained a B.Sc. in Mathematics and PhD, M.Sc. & B.Sc in Electrical Engineering from MIT. Honours include the IOP Mott Prize (2008), APS Oliver Buckley Prize (2005), the IUPAP Magnetism Prize/Neel Medal(2003), Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award (2002), Mildner Lecturer at UCL (2002), Fellow of the American Physical Society (1997), Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (1996). In addition, he has been a member and chairman of many panels, sponsored by the USDOE, American Physical Society, EPSRC, and National Research Council (US), among others. His personal research is currently focused on the implications of nanotechnology for information processing and health care.