Dirk Smit  has been with Shell since 1992, and currently Vice President of Exploration Technology in R&D and is Chief Scientist for Shell for Geophysics. He has a PhD in Mathematical Physics (String Theory), and had an Academic live before Shell as faculty (non tenure) at Berkeley in the US was awarded a position at Harvard Univ. He started his career with Shell in R&D and has held numerous positions since then among which chief geophysicist for Shell UK and Technology manager for Hydrocarbon Exploration. He holds positions outside Shell: a visiting faculty position at the Earth Science dept at MIT as well as a visiting professorship in Geoscience at the Chinese University of Petroleum in Beijing. He serves on numerous university advisory boards in The Netherlands as well as in China and US. He serves as a member of the National Research Council on Solid Earth Observations in the US and is a member of  the National Dutch Science Board for Basic Science Research in the Netherlands.  In his spare time he is an amateur astronomer and enjoys together with his son the deep skies through an 11 inch SCT during long Dutch winter nights.