Dr. Nikolaev is a research associate in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Cornell University. His research experience includes mathematical modeling in biology, applied mathematics, and computer science in both academia and industry. He received his M.S. in Applied Mathematics (1986) at the Moscow Institute of Engineering and Physics and holds his Ph.D. in Physics and Mathematics (Differential Equations and Equations of Mathematical Physics) from the Nizhegorod State University (1995). In his Ph.D. project, Dr. Nikolaev studied symmetry-breaking phenomena and local bifurcations of periodic solutions in dynamic systems with finite symmetry groups. While at the Institute for Mathematical Problems in Biology, Pushchino Research Center, he developed asymptotic and computational approaches to a number of biological projects, including electro-diffusion transport of ions, analyzed systems of coupled neuron pacemakers, modeled the synchronization of cell clocks in non-growing cell populations, and participated in the development of Local Bifurcation Analyzer (LocBif). In 1996-97, he spent 18 months at the School of Biomedical Sciences, Leeds University, UK, working on theoretic and applied aspects of the nonlinear spiral wave’s dynamics. In 1999-2002, he worked for Integrated Genomics, Inc. (Chicago), a bioinformatics company pioneering in metabolic reconstruction of complete genomes, where he and his group developed MetaCell, a pathway editor and stoichiometric modeling database tool. He then joined the Department of Chemical Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University (Nov., 2002, - Jan., 2005), where he participated in the development of flux and metabolite concentration genome-wide coupling analyses and large-scale metabolic-engineering nonlinear optimization frameworks. In February, 2005, Dr. Nikolaev moved to the Professor Shuler’s group (Cornell University), where he continues to develop mathematical and computational ‘whole-cell’ modeling frameworks.