Holger Vach was born in Wuppertal, Germany. After having earned his Bachelor of Science degree from Ruhr University in Bochum, he was granted a Fulbright scholarship to continue his studies in the USA, where he first obtained a Master of Science degree from the Physics Department (with Prof. W.S. Bickel) and then a second MS degree from the Optical Sciences Center (with Prof. G.I. Stegeman) of the University of Arizona in Tucson. He received a Ph.D. in Physics from the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich (with Prof. H. Walther) for his experimental work carried out at the Max Planck Institut for Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, and finally, his habilitation from the Ecole Polytechnique in Palaiseau, France. He became a researcher at the CNRS, and was promoted to Research Director in 2005. His main research areas involve the interaction of surfaces with atoms, molecules, and clusters using beam-foil spectroscopy, non-linear optics, laser spectroscopy, ultra-high vacuum techniques, and ab initio molecular dynamics simulations. Some of his most recent works concern “chemistry with a hammer”, hydrogen-induced crystallization, cluster-induced epitaxy, and 2D materials. He is the inventor of aromatic-like silicon nanoclusters (SiNCs). Most recently, he has focused his research interest on SiNCs with giant permanent electric dipole moments to tailor material work functions, notably, for more efficient electron emission in cathodes as those used in satellite thrusters.