Thomas Ward received his diploma in Chemistry in 1987 from the University of Fribourg and his PhD from the ETH Zürich with Profs. LM Venanzi and D. Seebach. He then joined the group of Prof. R. Hoffmann at Cornell University as a postdoctoral fellow in 1991. After a second postdoc at the University of Lausanne, he moved to Berne to undertake his independent career in 1993. In 2000, he moved to University of Neuchâtel as full professor of bio-inorganic chemistry and in 2008 to the University of Basel. His research focuses on artificial metalloenzymes and bio-nanotechnology.

Thomas Ward was awarded the ETH Medaille (1991), the A. Werner Fellowship (1993) as well as the A. Werner Prize (1998), a Swiss National Science Foundation Professorship (2000) and the RSC award in BioInorganic Chemistry (2017). He was awarded an advanced ERC grant to realize his DrEAM: the Directed Evolution of Artificial Metalloenzymes. More recently, he was awarded the 2021 ACS Catalysis Lectureship and the 2021 International Symposium in Bio-Organometallic Chemistry award.