Born in winter 1975 in a small Ukrainian town, he was brought up in a well-balanced educational environment. His activities were varied, ranging from swimming to membership of the chess club. He joined a swimming club when he was four and as he grew up he enjoyed other sports such as basketball, football, weight lifting, etc. He won a regional swimming competition in 1981 at the age of six. Apart from sport, Viktor was also active in the realm of art. He joined the art photography and cinematography club, and in the following years produced numerous photographic works, documentaries, and animated films. At school he equally enjoyed drama and music classes and physics and math. Closer to his teenage years Viktor's interests focused on electronics, applied physics and computer technology. At the radio amateurs club he learnt about circuit design, and digital and analogue electronics. This knowledge obtained as a result of early enthusiasm developed in a mature form later at university, where he got an outstanding mark (something like 105%) for his final exam in radio-electronics. At the same time he attended computing club where he produced his first ever code in BASIC on Yamaha computers. It was then, in the late eighties that he facilitated the organisation of the computer-oriented team. He believed that the main team-glue is a common purpose, and saw himself in the group as a generator of ideas and enthusiasm, which kept it together in development and growth. One of the first projects in the group that he managed completely from start through to completion was an entertainment software product called Virgula, written for ZX Spectrum. Apart from directing the project, he was responsible for the algorithms, software and graphic design of the product. The project was successful, and was out in the market along with the products of some of the famous software houses of those times such as Sega, Virgin, Code Masters, Ocean, etc. Although he decided to pursue a higher degree in Kiev and then in England, the group is still currently active. The team started as a non-profit group and now is a successful business, which offers a variety of IT services with contracts locally as well as in Belgium and the UK ( http://www.freegroup.com.ua/).

In 1993 Viktor Joined Kyiv (Kiev) Shevchenko University, Department of Physics; this is the top University in Ukraine. Founded in the first half of the 17th century the University currently contains about 20,000 students. He successfully completed his Bachelor's Degree in Physics in 1997 and pursued graduate education at the same university. During these years he joined the Liquid Crystal Group at the Institute of Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, first as a student (1997) and then as a part-time member of staff (experimental physicist) while completing his degree. During that time he published one paper and presented his results at the International Liquid Crystal Conference in Strasbourg, France (1998). Shortly after that he was offered a postgraduate position at Sheffield Hallam University in collaboration with QinetiQ (Malvern) and joined the Modelling Group in the end of 1998. His work was mainly to do with the simulation of LC mixtures. Some of his results were published in his PhD Thesis. Viktor also presented his work on several international conferences.

During the writing up period, Viktor worked on a design of 4:2:2 digital video transmission system in a TV company for a while, before he obtained his PhD in September 2003. At that time he was already working on the GRID parallelisation of stereo-correlation software, which was a part of the NeSC sponsored PGP Grid project - collaboration between the University of Glasgow, Edinburgh Parallel Computer Centre and Pepper's Ghost Productions. Early research into the problem showed that none of the existing Grid tools readily met the demands and the specifics of the stereo-algorithm's parallelisation. The level of dynamism required was met by the parallel infrastructure loosely based on Robert Milner's π-calculus process algebra. Viktor's main responsibility was the development of Java API that implemented π-calculus. Viktor gave a talk about his work at 10th Global Grid Forum (Berlin, Germany March 2004) and presented his work at the Workshop on Middleware Grid Computing at International Middleware Conference (Toronto, Canada October 2004). During this time, Viktor has also initiated, co-written and submitted two grant research proposals. That is not to say that he forgot how to enjoy himself. During this time Viktor and his wife Iryna, being to Scottish dancing, explored a beautiful Scottish countryside, visited four European countries and one huge Canada and been back to Ukraine (the first time in almost six years). Viktor now regularly plays badminton and squash with his colleagues at work at the university sports facilities.

After completing PGP Grid project in the end of 2004, Viktor is looking for interesting and challenging opportunities at academia or industry. Please feel free to contact Viktor if you have a job to offer.

(to be continued soon)