Stephen Blanksby holds a PhD (1999) in gas phase ion chemistry from the University of Adelaide (with Prof J.H. Bowie) and undertook postdoctoral research at the Technical University of Berlin (1999, with Prof H. Schwarz) and at the University of Colorado (with Prof G.B. Ellison). Blanksby was appointed to the School of Chemistry at the University of Wollongong in 2002 and was promoted to Professor in 2012. He was appointed Director of the Queensland University of Technology’s Central Analytical Research Facility in 2014. His research interests are at the interface between fundamental ion chemistry, spectroscopy and analytical mass spectrometry.