Vasilios Stavros studied Chemical Sciences at Kings College London (1995). He remained at Kings to complete his PhD (1999) and postdoc (2002) with Prof. Helen Fielding. He then undertook a postdoc with Prof. Steve Leone at UC Berkeley. At Berkeley, he developed his fascination of ultrafast laser spectroscopy. He returned to the UK as a Royal Society University Research Fellow (2005) to begin his independent research career at the University of Warwick, and was promoted to Professor in 2017. In Jan 2023, he moved to the University of Birmingham holding a joint position as Professor of Physical Chemistry and Royal Society Industry Fellow. His group uses ultrafast laser spectroscopy techniques to unravel the decay processes responsible for driving the underlying photoprotection mechanisms in a number of molecular systems. Their ultimate goal with these studies is to develop structure-dynamics-functions rules to predict next generation photothermal materials that could be used in photoprotection as well as photonics, phototherapy and photoimaging.