Hovik Panosyan received his Ph.D. in microbiology from IB of NAS of Armenia in 2003. He is currently Associate Professor at YSU. His main research area is the Biology of Extremophilic Microbes. He has been awarded numerous research fellowships and awards, including FEBS Short-Term Fellowship (2009 and 2004), FEMS Research Fellowship (2009), NFSAT (2011) DAAD (2013). He is currently the coordinator and leader of international research and educational programs and ISME ambassador of Armenia. He had work experience at the University of Bergen (Norway), LMU Munich (Germany), University of Nevada, Las Vegas (USA), and Institute of Biomolecular Chemistry Naples (Italy). He is actively engaged in studying the microbial community of extreme environments based on culture-dependent and molecular techniques. He was the Editor of several books published by Springer and Elsevier. He has published more than 70 research papers in peer-reviewed journals and 25 chapters.