Physicist Matthew Walhout, Ph.D., recently became the Vice President for Natural Sciences at the John Templeton Foundation, which is a philanthropic organization committed to harnessing the power of the sciences to address humanity’s most perplexing questions. Prior to 2019, he served for more than two decades as professor of physics, department chair, and dean for research at Calvin College in Michigan. His experimental and computational research has focused on ultracold atomic physics and spatiotemporal pattern-formation in electrical discharges. He has held visiting-researcher appointments at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and he is a member of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.