Dr. Rostislav Bukasov grew up in Ukraine and earned his specialist degree in chemistry from Kharkiv National University in 1994. After working in National Center of Drug Research for two years, he was employed in and soon owned a small photo service business operating in Russia and Ukraine.  Then he worked as an analytical chemist in pharmaceutical industry in Kharkiv for 15 month. He came to a Graduate School  of Chemistry Department at  University of Utah in Salt Lake City in 2004. He started research in Nanotechnology/Analytical Chemistry as a first graduate student of Dr. Shumaker Parry in 2005. His PhD study of unique, tunable infra-red  plasmonic properties of nanocrescents   resulted in three first author publications in Nano Letters (among  10% of the most cited publications (2007)  in the most impactful journal of American Chemical Society (ACS)  and the second most impactful journal in nanotechnology), ACS Nano and Analytical Chemistry.  As a postdoctoral researcher in Dr. Marc Porter group in Nanoinstitute of Utah he studied/developed sandwich immunoassays with Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering, which are applicable for biodetection and medical diagnostics (early detection of cancer, tuberculosis, viruses, e.g). The current research interest includes but NOT limited to Analytical and particulary Bioanalytical Chemistry, Raman/SERS spectroscopy, Surface Enhanced Fluorescence, biosensing, immuno-assays, biodetection, etc. The most productive member of my NU research group who started doing research about 5 years ago  as an undegraduate student: Alisher  Sultangaziyev and he has already 7 Scopus indexed  publications in my group and likely more our Q1 journal publictions will be submitted and get published.    

Beyond  chemistry Dr. Bukasov is proficient in hiking . He is world class exceptional in hiking/climbing with kids (e. g. Mt. Elbrus, 5642 m with 9 year old daughter Yunona Bukasova, while 8 year old son Peter was the youngest true climber of Elbrus and Peter became the youngest climber of Ojos del Salado `6880 m at the age of 9 ). Bukasov Rostislav   does a good deal of intensive exercise struggling with obesity , serious reading on a variety of subjects (usually in English), traveling ( he visited 80 countries)  , taking pictures and thinking, while his travel / hiking channel can be found on YouTube and the last but NOT the least parenting several children.

Advice to students: Try to be as much a well rounded person as you can be, as long as you are still good in your profession or area of specialization. Study not just for the test to maximize your GPA but to understand principles and therefore to keep the knowledge for many years after graduation. Also remember what your president said during his lecture at NU: “Those who read books will be in charge of those who read mainly in Internet.“