Christian Iliadis is a Greek who was born and raised in Germany. He obtained his diploma in physics from the University of Muenster/Germany and then moved to Notre Dame where he received his Ph.D. He spent three years in Vancouver, working in Canada’s largest nuclear physics laboratory. Since 1996, he has been Professor of Physics and Astronomy at UNC–CH, teaching a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses. His research specialty is nuclear astrophysics, which is the science of how stars generate energy and produce the elements in the Universe via nuclear fusion reactions. He also wrote a recently published textbook on this subject. His favorite hobby is soccer (or football, as it is called in the rest of the world).