Professor Andrew Holmes is a Laureate Professor of the School of Chemistry at the University of Melbourne. In October 2004 he was appointed ARC Federation Fellow and inaugural VESKI Fellow at the Bio21 Institute at the University of Melbourne and at CSIRO Molecular and Health Technologies. Andrew has been recognised for his groundbreaking work on light-emitting polymers. He has also been the recipient of a long list of awards including the Royal Society’s Royal Medal and the Descartes Prize. He was elected to the Australian Academy of Science in 2006 and served as Foreign Secretary from 2010 to 2014. He became President of the Academy in May 2014.