Peter van Loock is a professor in theoretical quantum optics and quantum information at the Institute of Physics of Mainz University. His research interests include protocols for processing quantum information on a small scale and for communicating quantum information on a large scale, with current or near-future, optical technology. He has contributed to the fields of continuous-variable and linear-optics quantum information processing as well as hybrid quantum information processing combining discrete and continuous approaches. In 2002, he received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Wales, UK. From 2002 to 2004 and from 2004 to 2007, he was a postdoc at the University of Erlangen-Nuernberg, Germany, and a visiting associate professor at the National Institute of Informatics in Tokyo, Japan, respectively. From 2007 to 2012, before moving to Mainz, he was an Emmy Noether junior research group leader at Erlangen-Nuernberg University and at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen, Germany. Peter van Loock is an author of about 80 publications in international high-level, peer-reviewed journals (including 1 letter in Nature, 1 in Nature Physics, and 13 in Phys. Rev. Lett.) with about 3000 citations (excluding self-citations).