Note: Born in Brazil, Mario Barbatti earned a Ph.D. in physics in 2001. He lived and worked in Brazil, Austria, and Germany before becoming a professor of theoretical chemistry at the University of Aix Marseille France in 2015. Barbatti's research focuses on simulations of photoexcited molecules. He has published over 140 scientific articles in the field. For this work, he was awarded a chair of excellence Amidex in 2015 and an ERC Advanced grant in 2019. Still in 2019, Mario Barbatti published his first fiction book, "One Billion Faces."