David Leslie Officer is a New Zealand organic chemist and materials scientist. He completed a Bachelor of Science (Honours) and PhD at Victoria University of Wellington in 1982 under the direction of Professor Brian Halton, before undertaking postdoctoral positions at the Australian National University, and the University of Cologne (as an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow). Officer returned to New Zealand and took up his first academic post at Massey University in 1986, rising through the ranks to full professor. In 2005, Officer was appointed as a fellow of the New Zealand Institute of Chemistry and moved to the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology. Officer is also currently listed as a professorial fellow with the Intelligent Polymer Research Institute and