John D. Simon became the first George B. Geller Professor of Chemistry at Duke University in 1998. He is currently Chair Chemistry Department at Duke and a faculty member of the Biochemistry, and Ophthalmology Departments of the Duke Medical Center. John graduated from Williams College in 1979 with a B.A. in Chemistry and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1983. After a postdoctoral fellowship with Professor Mostafa El-Sayed at UCLA, John joined the faculty of the Department of Chemistry at UCSD in 1985.