Short presentation

I am a systematic entomologist with research focus on rove beetles (Insecta: Coleoptera: Staphylinidae), the largest family of living organisms. Together with collaborators many of which are my current or former students, we discover new species, develop phylogeny-based classifications, and capture evolutionary, biogeographic and macroecological patterns of biodiversity.

I grew up near the North-Western Caucasus mountains nature where I got interested in biology. In 1993, after graduating the univeristy in Krasnodar, I moved to St. Petersburg State University to obtain a PhD degree in 1997. In St.Petersburg I was able to work with rich collections of the Zoological Institute Russian Academy of Science. In 2002 I moved to USA for post doctoral work at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago to learn from Alfred Newton and Margaret Thayer, leading experts on the staphylinoid beetles. In 2007 I joined the Natural History Museum Denmark at the Univeristy of Copenhagen as a curator of the Coleoptera (beetles) collection and an assistant and later an associate professor. From 2022 I lead the museum's Zoology research section. Studying other institutional entomological collections and leading insect collecting expeditions around the globe is big part of my work. 

At UCPH I always teach Entomology and Terrestrial Zoology courses. In the near past I taught insect classes within the Basal Arctic Biology course, and now I instruct Communicating Science module within the UCPH-SCIENCE "Fundamentals" PhD course. I train a new generation of zoological taxonomists through Master, PhD and post doctoral level mentorship. This effort aims a sustainable taxonomic expertise to identify, study and protect numerous insect species most of which are yet to be discovered by science.