David Cortie obtained his PhD in Physics from the University of Wollongong in 2013, and went on to postdoctoral work at the University of British Columbia, the Max-Planck Society, the Australian National University and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation. In 2017, he was awarded an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Research Fellowship. He is also an associate investigator with the ARC Centre for Future Low Energy Electronics Technologies (FLEET). In 2021, David joined the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation as a neutron scientist specialising in the applications of neutron scattering to characterize magnetic and thermoelectric materials, exploring the link between quantum phenomena and functionality.