Dr Shimul Maharaj was born in Durban and did his schooling and attended university in Pietermaritzburg. He obtained his BSc (1994) and Honours (1995) degrees from the Pietermaritzburg campus of the University of Natal. Subsequently, he moved to Durban and obtained a Masters (1999) from University of Durban-Westville and PhD (2006) from University of KwaZulu-Natal. Prior to obtaining the PhD, he was employed as associate lecturer in Physics at University of Durban-Westville (2000-2002) and then as research assistant at Hermanus Magnetic Observatory in 2003. He is currently employed as Research Physicist at SANSA Space Science and his area of research expertise is the theory of linear and nonlinear waves in space plasmas. His focus is predominantly on plasmas which occur in the near-Earth regions of the magnetosphere but he also has an interest in dusty plasmas which occur much further away from Earth, e.g. in the rings of Saturn.