Basile F. E. Curchod was born in Vevey (Switzerland) and has been profoundly intrigued by the interaction between light and molecules since his studies at EPFL (Switzerland). During his PhD, he worked on developing theoretical tools to better understand photochemical reactions, that is, chemical reactions triggered by light. He carried on his research on this topic during two postdoctoral stays, one at Stanford University (USA) and the other at the Max Planck Institute in Halle (Germany). He then moved to Bristol (UK) as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow to work alongside experimentalists, applying his theoretical methods to understand the mechanistic details of some photochemical processes. In November 2017, he created the In Silico Photochemistry Group (www.in-silico-photochem.com) at Durham University (UK). In September 2018, he was awarded an ERC Starting Grant. He was promoted to Associate Professor in August 2021.
In March 2022, Basile moved to the Centre for Computational Chemistry at the University of Bristol as an Associate Professor in Theoretical Chemistry. He was promoted to Professor of Theoretical Chemistry in August 2024. Basile is the recipient of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s 2022 Marlow Award, the PCCP Emerging Investigator Lectureship Award, and the 2023 Journal of Physical Chemistry A and PHYS Division Lectureship Award from the American Chemical Society. Basile is a member of the Early-Career Advisory Board of ChemPhotoChem and the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Physical Chemistry A.