Igor Smolenov, currently the Chief Development Officer of Arcturus Therapeutics (San Diego, USA), is a recognized vaccine development expert with a proven record of accomplishment in small biotechnology and large pharmaceutical companies. He contributed to successfully developing and licensing several innovative vaccines, including two COVID-19 vaccines. His main research directions are preventing and controlling infectious diseases and developing nucleotide-based prophylactic vaccines. He has published over 70 papers and regularly presents at international conferences.