Vernon Gibson is Visiting Professor of Chemistry at Imperial College. He occupied the Sir Edward Frankland BP Chair of Inorganic Chemistry until late 2008 when he accepted an offer to join BP as the company’s Chief Chemist. During his University research career he has supervised and graduated more than 40 PhD students and published in excess of 30 patents and 300 academic papers with over 11,000 citations. He has recently served on the US National Research Council assessing the US Department of Energy’s ‘Basic Energy Sciences Program’ and has been a member of BP’s external Technology Advisory Council since 2005. As BP’s Chief Chemist he provides leadership to the large community of chemists and chemical disciplines, and maintains connections with world-class chemicals research through major academic and industrial partners. He has a particular interest in advancing cooperation across the academic-industrial interface.