Dr. Ard Louis, January 26, 2009.  Socrates in San Francisco hosted a private event in Palo Alto at which Dr. Louis spoke on the nature of self assembling systems and their implications,  Dr. Ard Louis is a Reader in Theoretical Physics and a Royal Society University Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, where he leads an interdisciplinary research group studying problems on the border between chemistry, physics and biology. Prior to Oxford he taught Theoretical Chemistry at Cambridge University where he was also director of studies in Natural Sciences at Hughes Hall. He was born in the Netherlands, raised in Gabon, Central Africa, did his undergraduate studies at the University of Utrecht, Netherlands and received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Cornell University, U.S.A.