Rodney S. Ruoff is a world-leading pioneer in graphene-based materials. He is currently the Cockrell Family Regents Chair VII Professor in Mechanical Engineering and Texas Materials Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. He received a Doctor of Philosophy in Chemical Physics by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1988. He was then a Fulbright Fellow in 1988-89 with the Max Planck Institute fuer Stroemungsforschung in Goettingen, Germany and later the John Evans Professor of Nanoengineering and a Full Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University. From 2002 to 2007 he was the director of the Northwestern University Biologically Inspired Materials Institute.