Samjid Mannan received his BA in physics at Balliol College, Oxford in 1988 and his PhD in theoretical elementary particle physics at Southampton University in 1991. In 1992 he started work as a postdoc in the area of electronics manufacturing, first at Salford University and then in 1995 at Loughborough University. Samjid was appointed as a lecturer at King’s College London in 1999, and took up an Advanced Research Fellowship from EPSRC later that year. He is currently Professor of Materials Technology in the Department of Physics, Fellow of the Institute of Physics, and Senior Member of IEEE.