Diego Tamburini is an analytical chemist by training and obtained his Ph.D. in Chemistry and Materials Science from the University of Pisa in 2015. He specialized in the use of chromatographic and mass spectrometric techniques for the characterization of organic materials, in particular archaeological wood, Asian lacquers, and natural and synthetic dyes. He joined the Department of Scientific Research of the British Museum in 2016 with an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship focusing on the identification of natural dyes in historical and archaeological textiles. In 2020, he moved to the Department of Conservation and Scientific Research of the National Museum of Asian Art (Smithsonian Institution) as a Smithsonian Postdoctoral Fellow to study 19th-century Central Asian ikat textiles. After a short Postdoctoral Fellowship at Northwestern University, he re-joined the British Museum in 2021 as a scientist for Polymers and Modern Organic Materials.