Professor Lev Kantorovich studied theoretical condensed matter physics at the University of Latvia, Riga, Latvia (former part of the USSR), defended his Ph.D. in 1985 in the group of Alex Shluger (currently, at University College London, UK), and then worked at the University of Latvia and the Latvian Medical Academy. From 1993 to 1994, he worked as Visiting Scientist at the University of Oviedo, Spain, and he went on to hold postdoctoral positions at the University of Keele (1994–6) and University College London (1996-2002), both in the UK. Since 2002, he has worked at King’s College London, initially as Lecturer, then as Reader, and, from 2009, as Professor of Physics. His research interests include the development and application of computational methods for material science, imaging and manipulation at surfaces with atomic probes (AFM and STM), self-assembly of molecules on surfaces, order-N DFT-based methods, quantum conductance with non-equilibrium Green’s functions methods, dynamics of open quantum systems using path-integral methods, development and applications of the kinetic Monte Carlo method in growth phenomena, and classical and quantum generalized Langevin equation methods.