Tom Oliver is an Associate Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Bristol in the School of Chemistry. His research group use cutting-edge ultrafast spectroscopies to address contemporary problems in physical chemistry such as: the photoinduced dynamics of natural and de novo proteins, the mechanisms of electron and energy transfer in complex systems, structure-function relationships in fluorescent carbon nanodots, and the nature of iridescent photonic chloroplasts in shade plants.

Tom received his PhD from the University of Bristol in 2011, working with Prof. Mike Ashfold FRS. From 2011 to 2015, he was a post-doctoral research fellow at the UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory with Prof. Graham Fleming FRS, where he pioneered the two-dimensional electronic-vibrational spectroscopy technique to study ultrafast photophysics of natural proteins and chemical systems. In 2015, he was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship: a prestigious 8-year independent fellowship facilitating him to establish his own research group at the University of Bristol.

He was later appointed as a lecturer (tenured position) in 2018, and promoted to Associate Professor in 2019. Between 2024-2025 he was a visiting Professor at the University of Southern California as Leverhulme International Fellow. He was part of the Boostcrop team awarded the 2025 Faraday Horizon Prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry in recognition of the impact delivered by developing an inert “molecular heater” spray that enhances food crop yields upon sunlight exposure.

You can contact Tom via email at: tom.oliver@bristol.ac.uk