David Chavez is currently a team leader and project leader at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He has published 58 papers, has given 29 invited lectures, and holds 10 patents on explosives, propellants, and pyrotechnics. In 2011 he was selected as an E. O. Lawrence Award winner by the U.S. Department of Energy and in 2014 he was selected as a Distinguished Alumnus of the California Institute of Technology. He was an invited professor at the École Normale Supérieure in Cachan, France, in 2008 and is also an adjunct professor of chemistry at the University of New Mexico-Taos campus. Email: dechavez@lanl.gov.