Vladimir V. Rubtsov was born at 1948 in Kharkov, then the USSR (now independent Ukraine). He received his M.S. degree in computer science in 1972 and after that joined the laboratory of Dr. A. V. Zolotov in Kalinin (now Tver), where for three years studied the problem of the Tunguska explosion. Received his Ph.D. degree in the philosophy of science from the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (Moscow, Russia), having defended in 1980 the doctoral thesis "Philosophical and Methodological Aspects of the Problem of Extraterrestrial Civilizations" (the first of its kind in the former USSR). Dr. Rubtsov's professional fields are methodology of interdisciplinary research, sociology of science and technology, and general epistemology. He is currently Director of the Research Institute on Anomalous Phenomena (RIAP), as well as the Editor of its newsletter RIAP Bulletin. Dr. Rubtsov has authored some 120 scientific and popular-science articles in the Soviet, post-Soviet, and foreign press, as well as two scientific monographs: The Problem of Extraterrestrial Civilizations (with A. D. Ursul, Kishinev: "Shtiintsa" ["Science", the publishing house of the Moldavian Academy of Sciences], 1984 & 1987) and UFOs and Modern Science (with Y. V. Platov, Moscow: "Nauka" ["Science", the publishing house of the Russian Academy of Sciences], 1991). Dr. Rubtsov is a full member of the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics, an associate member of the Society for Scientific Exploration, USA, a member of the Expert Group on Anomalous Atmospheric Phenomena of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and a member of the SETI Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences