After completing a PhD in theoretical statistical physics from Cambridge University in 1982, Professor Peter King spent 17 years with BP at their technology centre in Sunbury-on-Thames where he worked on a wide variety of subjects applying methods of mathematical physics to reservoir characterisation and modelling. In particular, he developed a real space renormalisation approach to both single and two phase upscaling. In collaboration with the members of the Department of Physics at Boston University, he has used percolation theory to estimate connectivity of sands as well as uncertainties in production from low to intermediate net-to-gross systems. Prof. Peter had also developed network models of pore scale flow and viscous fingering, object based methods for characterising reservoir heterogeneities. Again in conjunction with Boston University, he worked on segregation in avalanches in granular materials as an explanation for the formation of crossbeds in Aeolian systems. Recently, Prof. Peter has worked on applying stochastic search algorithms (simulated annealing and genetic algorithms) to optimising business decisions with particular interest to decision making in the presence of uncertainty. He joined the TH Huxley School at Imperial College in 2000. Prof. Peter is a Fellow of both the Institute of Physics (Chairman of the Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics sub-group from 1999) and the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, having served on its Governing Council from 1991 to 1994. He is a Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor in the Department of Engineering at Cambridge University and a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Physics at Boston University. He is a member of the Physics College of the EPSRC and has sat on a number of its advisory committees. He is a deputy editor of Petroleum Geoscience.