Rik R. Tykwinski earned his BS at the University of Minnesota – Duluth (1987) and his PhD at the University of Utah with Professor Peter Stang (1994). As a PDF at ETH-Zürich, he worked with Professor François Diederich, and in 1997 he joined the faculty at the University of Alberta. In 2009, he moved to Germany to accept the position of Chair of Organic Chemistry at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, and in 2016 he moved back to the University of Alberta as Chair of the Department of Chemistry. He is a physical organic chemist, with a focus on structure-property relationships in conjugated molecules. In his free time, he enjoys mountain biking and spending time with his family.