I grew up in Kineshma, Ivanovo region, Russia. This is a small remote textile town of about 100,000 citizens located 300 miles to the East from Moscow on the great Russian river Volga. In Kineshma Volga is 1 mile wide (there is no bridge for more than 200 miles in both directions, they built one in Kineshma only in 2002) and is surrounded by large forests. Kineshma has no university, no swimming pools, no track and field stadium.
My family is a sportive one. My mom was a Champion of Russia in 800m running and my dad is an Honored Coach of Russia. They still live in Kineshma. Sports dominated my childhood, but I did not become an athlete,though one of my training mates (and a pupil of my dad) became an Olympic Champion in High Jump (Sydney 2000). Nevertheless, I always kept the strong passion for sports all my life.
At age 16 I left home for Moscow to study mathematics. There I graduated from the Kolmogorov High School of Mathematics and Physics#18 and entered Moscow State University, Department of Mathematics and Mechanics (Mechmat). I was a diligent student,at some point I even received the most prestigious in Russia Lenin Stipend. Eventually I graduated with honors and entered the graduate school. Altogether I spent 8 years in Moscow, living in dorms and studying mathematics (excluding short school breaks spent mostly in Kineshma).
In 1994 I left the graduate school in Moscow and came to Chapel Hill, NC, USA to become a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In Chapel Hill I met my wife and got married. After getting my PhD in 1998, I went to Berkeley, CA for post-doctorate appointments at MSRIand the University of California at Berkeley. My son was born there on November 16th, 2000. After 3 years in the Bay Area we moved to Indianapolis, where I obtained a tenure track at the MathematicsDepartment at IUPUI. On October 18, 2004, my twin sons were born in Indianapolis. In year 2005 I obtained tenure and became an Associate Professor.
This is the story of my name. I get a lot of questions about my name. Here is the answer. In Russia each person's name has 3 forms which are dependent on his/her given first name and the first name of his/her father.
Form 1. My given first name is Evgeny (sometimes spelled Evgenij or Evgeniy), it is pronounced e-v-g (as in get)-e-n-i with the stress on the second "e". It is formed from the Greek root meaning"noble". This name would normally be used by people who are older than me and/or who do not want to be formal when addressing me.
Form 2. Correspondingly, my informal Russian name (equivalent to nickname in US) is Zhenya, pronounced g(as in Frenchmirage)-a(as in cat)-n-ja (as in yum). It is usually used by friends or relatives of similar age.
Form 3. My formal name is formed from my first name and the first name of my dad which accidentally also happens to be Evgeny. So, my formal name is Evgeny Evgenievich (vich is the suffix which is usually added to dad's name and is equivalent to American middlename). It would be used in most official situations, and by younger people, e.g. my students would use this form.For official English documents (stemmed out of my Russian passport) I have to keep Evgeny and, of course, the official Russian documents list me as Evgeny Evgenievich.
Now, any of these names sounds too odd in English, so I chose to translate my name to the closest equivalent American name to simplify communications. So most English speaking people call me Eugene.
I exclude here the first passion on the list - my family, saving this private story for my best friends. Neither I will touch my job - as I have a separate page for that (see Research).
Sports. I use any opportunity to do almost any sport.My favorites are European ones, unfortunately baseball, golf, basketball are not for me. I love track and field events, tennis, volleyball, soccer, table tennis, cross-country skiing, handball. I tend to think that I am decent in all these disciplines. Obviously, I cannot posses great special skills in all events, but I usually compensate for that at the amateur level with my running/jumping/understanding abilities. To give you an idea of my level: at my best I ran marathon in 3 hours, mile in 4'15''and long jumped 7 meters (23 feet). I am 6'1'' (186 cm) and 165 lb (75kg). In Indianapolis I raced a couple of races and came second in both,see Run 4 thebone and
Chess. Chess can be a sport, art or science. I consider it more of an eternal puzzle. Since I do not play tournaments, and I do not practice on the regular basis - my practical level is not very high. I would estimate it roughly at ELO 2000, even less at blitz. I usually pacify myself that "if I needed to " I could get it up to around 2200 in no time. I love to watch grand-masters playing in real time and analyze their games. I also like to play computers and I try not to use any "human" dirty tricks like for example "holes in databases" :).
Music. Of all my hobbies this one is rather weird as I do not have "music ears". In particular I cannot play violin or sing to a guitar. However, I do play piano, in fact I finished a 7 year music school for children in Kineshma. However after I left my hometown at age of 16, for the next 19 years I had no permanent access to piano. Just recently my dream came true and I got a nice Chickering piano for me and my family. My skills are slowly coming back, but I still have a long way to go before I could perform in public. I like classic music for piano, symphony, Russian pop and sometimesjazz. Bethhoven and Chajkovskij (what a strange combination!) are my all time favorites.