Dr Phil Attard is an independent research scientist working broadly in classical and quantum statistical mechanics, equilibrium and non-equilibrium thermodynamics, and colloid science. He was a Professorial Research Fellow of the Australian Research Council and has authored some 150 papers with over 7000 citations. He has contributed measurement techniques for atomic force microscopy, computer simulation and integral equation algorithms for condensed matter, the second entropy principle for non-equilibrium thermodynamics, the classical phase space formulation of quantum statistical mechanics, and nanobubbles.