Dr. Anatoli Afansjev is a Professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at Mississippi State University. He is interested in the studies of the properties of superheavy nuclei, where proton- and neutron-rich nuclei play an important role in astrophysical processes, pairing correlations, etc. His research is performed in close collaboration with world leading theoretical and experimental groups and requires the development of theoretical formalism, employing the methods of quantum many body theory based on the Dirac equation, computational tools and their application to the analysis of experimental data.