Education & Work Experience

Oleg's Education & Work experience

2023 - Present

Science Delivery Coordinator (Mid-Life Upgrade)

National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS), FAAM Airborne Laboratory

As a part of the Mid-Life Upgrade team, Oleg was working on upgrading the measurement capability of the FAAM Airborne Laboratory. His goal was working with user groups, instrument developers and other stakeholders to ensure that new instruments can be successfully developed, installed, certified and operated onboard the Atmospheric Research Aircraft, all the while the successful operation of current instrument kit was maintained. Therefore, he was involved in the majority of the projects regarding the integration of new scientific instrumentation on the Atmospheric Research Aircraft.

His work required an in-depth understanding of a wide selection of instruments & measurement techniques, aircraft safety and operational requirements, as well as excellent communication and project management skills.

Oleg was also responsible for informing the community & the public on instrument capability, which he did by delivering a number of talks & webinars aimed at scientific and non-scientific audiences, writing accessible texts and articles, as well as assisting stakeholders & colleagues in compiling and providing similar information. An example of such outreach is also the following video, to which Oleg wrote a script and presented it in front of the camera.

Oleg is a recipient of the 2025 NCAS Atmospheric Stars Award
in recognition for outstanding contribution to NCAS. A quote from the nomination states that "[Oleg's] commitment to accessible information in an engaging format makes him a great role model for effective communication"

Additionally, Oleg engaged in broader NCAS activities by:

engaging in the "I'm a Scientist" STEM outreach programme and winning the award for most-voted-for scientist in July 2025
leading the planning committee of the 2026 Harmony in the Skies: Bridging Horizons in Earth System Science Early careers symposium and helping plan 2025 instalment of the same event
leading the work on designing & running a workshop on Mental Health in Research & Academia during symposiums and NCAS staff meeting
Engaged in other NCAS outreach activities by filming videos and writing texts for British Science Week (example video), Mental Health Awareness Week (video link) & Neurodiversity Celebration Week.
Was an active member of an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee

2018-2023

Doctor of Philosophy
The Open University

During his PhD in Astronomy & Astrophysics, Oleg was working on the stellar population synthesis tool BiSEPS to investigate the rate of astrophysical false positives caused by blended eclipsing binary and triple star systems in the observation fields of the upcoming PLATO satellite mission planned to launch in 2026 by ESA.

The work involved programming in Fortran, Python and SQL, working with high-performance computing cluster and parallel processing, and required an in-depth understanding of underlying physics of multiple star systems, spatial distribution of stars in the Milky Way, detailed knowledge of exoplanets as well as specifics of operation of the PLATO telescope.

The title of Oleg's PhD thesis is "Hierarchical triple stars as astrophysical contaminants in planetary transit surveys".

2014 - 2018

MPhys (Hons) Physics with Astrophysics
The University of Kent

Oleg achieved First class honours in MPhys Physics with Astrophysics at the University of Kent.

His Masters project in theoretical physics involved analysis of the dice lattice by investigating its band structure at a flux density of 1⁄2 quantum per plaquette, which resulted in particles hopping from one lattice point to another. During the project, code was written in MATLAB and existing C++ Diagham code was modified to suit the needs of the project.

His 3rd year project involved the analysis of three Martian surfaces with different histories of geological activity. An overall analysis of Martian history, crater formation, secondary craters, pseudo-craters and pingos, was done and ages of three surfaces were determined by the isochron fitting procedure.

During his studies, Oleg also volunteered as a mentor (for one year) and later as a lead mentor (two years) for the 1st year Physics students.