Dominic Tildesley received his DPhil from Oxford University in 1977. Following postdoctoral experience in the USA, he taught at Southampton University from 1981 and was awarded the Chair of Theoretical Chemistry in 1990. In 1998 he joined Unilever and became Chief Scientist for Unilever’s Home and Personal Care Division. In January 2013, he become the Director and CEO of CECAM (Centre Européen de Calcul Atomique et Moléculaire) based at the EPFL, in Lausanne, Switzerland.
He retired in December 2017 and is currently a visiting Professor at the University of Southampton, where he holds an honorary doctorate. He is the author of The UK e-Infrastructure Strategy for Science and Business: a roadmap for the development and use of advanced computing, data and networks, and he co-chaired the UK E-infrastructure Leadership team. He has been President of the Royal Society of Chemistry and received a CBE for services to science, technology and business in 2014.