About David J. Wales
David John Wales (born 1963) is a professor of chemical physics in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge.. == Education == Wales was educated at Newport Free Grammar School followed by the University of Cambridge where he was awarded an open scholarship to study at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge receiving his BA degree in 1985. He went on to complete a PhD on cluster chemistry, awarded in 1988 for research supervised by Anthony J. Stone. In 2004 he was awarded a ScD degree from Cambridge. == Career and research == During 1989, Wales was an English-Speaking Union Lindemann Trust Fellow at the University of Chicago, doing postdoctoral research in collaboration with R. Stephen Berry. He returned to a research fellowship at Downing College, Cambridge in 1990, was a Lloyd's of London Tercentenary Fellow in 1991, and a Royal Society University Research Fellowship (URF) from 1991 to 1998. He was appointed a Lecturer in Cambridge in 1998, and Professor of Chemical Physics in 2008. Wales' research investigates energy landscapes, with applications to chemical biology, spectroscopy, clusters, machine learning, quantum computing, solids and surfaces. Wales is the author of the textbook Energy Landscapes: Applications to Clusters, Biomolecules and Glasses and a co-author of Introduction to Cluster Chemistry with Michael Mingos. His research has been funded by the European Research Council (Advanced Grant in 2010), the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).
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