Alexander A. Balandin received his BS and MS degrees Summa Cum Laude in Mathematics and Applied Physics from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Russia; and PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame, USA. He is presently a Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and the University of California Presidential Chair Professor of Materials Science and Engineering. He also serves as Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the Applied Physics Letters. His research expertise covers nanotechnology, materials science, electronics, solid-state physics and phononics fields. Professor Balandin is a recipient of The MRS Medal from the Materials Research Society for discovery of graphene thermal properties and the Pioneer of Nanotechnology Award from IEEE for his nano-phononics research. He is an elected Fellow of MRS, APS, IEEE, OSA, SPIE and AAAS. Since 2015, each year, he has been among the Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researchers – a distinction that recognizes the world's most influential researchers of the past decade by citations in the Web of Science. In 2021, Professor Balandin was named The Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellow – the most prestigious single-investigator DOD award with $3M multi-year funding that “supports new, out-of-the-box ideas where research creativity intersects with the unknown.” For more information, visit: https://balandingroup.ucr.edu/