Gian-Luca Oppo is the 1796 Freeland Chair in Natural Philosophy since 2015. He graduated from the Institute of Optics and the University of Florence, Italy, in 1983. He worked at the Universities of Toronto (1985-1987), Drexel in Philadelphia (1987-1989) and Nice (1989). Oppo joined Strathclyde in 1989 and became professor in 1998. Together with William Firth and Stephen Barnett, Oppo built the Computational Nonlinear and Quantum Optics group that was flagged 5* in the RAE in 2001. He created the Institute of Complex Systems at Strathclyde with Des Higham (Mathematics) in 2007. In 2011 Oppo was awarded the Occhialini Medal and Prize from the Institute of Physics and the Italian Physical Society for outstanding insights into spatio-temporal dynamics of lasers, nonlinear and quantum optical systems, achieved through the development and application of powerful techniques for large-to-small-scale computing. In 2014 Oppo was awarded the Teaching Excellence Award for Most Enthusiastic Teacher at Strathclyde. Oppo's research profile and citations are available on Google Scholar. 

• Winner of the Occhialini medal and prize (2011)
• Winner of the Teaching Excellence Award (2016)
• Winner of the Teaching Excellence Award (2014)
• Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2012)
• Fellow of the Optical Society of America (1999)
• Fellow of the institute of Physics (1997)