Experienced Mathematics and Physics Instructor, Chicago, college experience and tutoring since 2013

I am writing to express my strong support to a very talented and extremely multifaceted scientist Dr. Kirill Zhuravlev.

I know Kirill since 2010, when he assumed his duties as a postdoc and beamline scientist at the Sector 13 of the Advanced Photon Source (Argonne National Laboratory). We carried out multiple experiments using the state of the art Brillouin scattering spectroscopy setup coupled with Raman scattering and synchrotron X-ray to study phase transitions and elastic properties of advanced materials at extreme conditions. His list of publications resulting from our collaboration speaks volumes about his diligent work, expertise and dedication. Dr. Zhuravlev showed great amount of patience, helpfulness and initiative during our user support operations. His outstanding background in Physics proved to be irreplaceable in all major instrumental and experimental developments of both laser heating systems and two major synchrotron beamstations available at this Sector.

Kirill Zhuravlev worked as a Ph. D. student on the project involving the high pressure effects on conjugated organic molecules. He demonstrated great degree of independence, deep knowledge of physics, and ability to perform his job accurately and in timely manner. In the course of his Ph. D. work he worked out the mechanism of the flattening of the conjugated polyphenyl molecules under pressure. Even though I did not personally know him at that time, his dissertation work was an inspiration for one of the University of Nevada Las Vegas graduate students, Mr. Edward Romano (currently working as an R&D Test Engineer at Bio-Rad) that I was co-supervising to carry out and successfully accomplish experimental high pressure studies of 1,3,5,7-Cyclooctatetraene.

During Kirill’s postdoctoral work at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, he worked in collaboration with the quantum physics group on the high-pressure optical and elastic properties of nanocrystals. He determined that PbSe quantum dots have high optical deformation potential and proposed an idea of a dynamic pressure sensor, which was subsequently patented. He also independently worked on the problem in statistical physics, studying Ising model. As a result, he has proposed novel and interesting idea of estimating the critical points of Ising models on the lattices, which accounts for the lattice symmetry, the feature, which other mean-field models lack. He demonstrated ingenuity and non-standard thinking in regards to the approach to the problems in science.

Dr. Zhuravlev has switched his research interests to the field of geophysics in 2007 and has since made some valuable contributions to the field. He studied the P-V equation of state of iron-rich ferropericlase and related its volume behavior under extreme conditions to other studies of the same material, helping to elucidate the relationship between the high-to-low spin transition and phase stability of ferropericlase.

Kirill Zhuravlev has an uncanny ability to explain complex ideas in a digestible way, because he graduated from one of the best schools of Physics – Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology – putting him in a top tier of candidates that are capable of making significant contributions to the educational process.

Sergey Tkachev, Ph. D.