Baron G. Peters, PhD, is the William H. and Janet G. Lycan Professor in the Dept. of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at the Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Director of Undergraduate Studies. Peters has been on the faculty at Illinois for six years. Before joining Illinois, he held joint appointments in chemical engineering and chemistry at the Univ. of California, Santa Barbara. His research interests include reaction rate theory, heterogeneous catalysis, and the kinetics of nucleation and growth. Peters authored Reaction Rate Theory and Rare Events, the first comprehensive textbook on reaction rate theories and rare events methods. His work has earned several honors, including a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award, AIChE Computational Molecular Science and Engineering Forum Impact Award, and the AIChE Separations Div. Award in Crystallization. Peters graduated summa cum laude from the Univ. of Missouri, Columbia with degrees in mathematics and chemical engineering. He earned his PhD in chemical engineering from the Univ. of California, Berkeley, and completed postdoctoral research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and École Normale Supérieure.