Professor Shipman received his B.A. from Rice University and earned his Ph.D. from the University of California-Berkeley under Charles Harris in 2005. He was then a post-doctoral researcher from 2006 until 2008 at the University of Virginia with Professor Brooks Pate. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Physical Chemistry at New College of Florida, a small liberal arts college in Sarasota, FL. His research is concerned with the study of the rotational spectra of molecules in vibrationally-excited states at room temperature.