Michael Zhdanov has been a professor at the University of Utah, Utah, United States, since 1993 and has been the director of CEMI since 1995. Hereceived a Ph.D. in 1970 from Moscow State University. He was a professor at the Moscow Academy of Oil and Gas and head of the Department of Deep Electromagnetic Study before moving to the University of Utah. He was awarded an Honorary Diploma of Gauss Professorship by the Göttingen Academy of Sciences, Germany, in 1990 and was elected a full member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences in 1991. He received an Honorary Professorship from the China National Center of Geological Exploration Technology in 1997 and an Honorary Membership Award from the Society of Exploration Geophysicists in 2013. Dr. Zhdanov was elected as a distinguished professor at the University of Utah in 2016. He has been a Fellow of the Electromagnetics Academy since 2002.