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David Vanderbilt is responsible for several fundamental advances in first-principles methods for the theoretical investigation of functional materials, First, the ultrasoft pseudopotential (1990) dramatically increased the efficiency and range of accurate total-energy calculations. In 1993, Vanderbilt made a major conceptual breakthrough by recognizing that the correct definition of bulk electric polarization is inherently quantum mechanical. The formulation in terms of a Berry connection proved to be the first level of a more general framework, including orbital magnetization, anomalous Hall conductivity, and magnetoelectric response. Third, the maximally-localized Wannier function construction (1995) has given new insight into electric polarization and topological insulators.