Mikhail Sephanov obtained his PhD from the University of Oxford in 1994. He was a Postdoctoral Research Associate University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign from 1994 to 1997 and then spent two years at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is presently Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and RHIC Fellow. His research interests lie in particle and nuclear physics, quantum field theory on the lattice, matter under extreme conditions, and heavy-ion collisions.