P. K. Shukla was born in India on July 7, 1950. He received the Ph.D. degree in physics from Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India, in 1972 and the Ph.D. degree in plasma physics from Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden, in 1975. In January 1972, he moved from India to Umeâ, and in January 1973, he joined the Fakultät fü1/4r Physik und Astronomie, Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB), Bochum, Germany, as a permanent Faculty Member, where he is currently the RUB International Chair (Distinguished Professor) and the Director of the International Centre for Advanced Studies in Physical Sciences. Previously, he was a Professor with the Department of Plasma Physics, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Umeå University, in December 1997. He holds a Visiting Professorship with SUPA, Department of Physics, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, U.K., and is a Full Professor with the Instituto Superior Tecnico, Technical University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Plasma Physics. He serves as a member of the editorial board of New Journal of Physics. His main research interests include theoretical plasma physics, nonlinear structures in plasmas and fluids, and collective processes in space physics and astrophysics. His current research interests involve the physics of dusty plasmas, quantum plasma physics, astro-particle physics (collective neutrino plasma interactions), and nonlinear phenomena in planetary magnetospheres and astrophysics. Prof. Shukla is a member of the Physics Class of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (Scotland), an Associate Fellow of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS), a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and a Fellow of the Institute of Physics (London). He has received the most prestigious APS Nicholson Medal for the Human Outreach in Physics.