Alex Mogilner

Alex Mogilner is an American professor and research scientist at the Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior and Department of Mathematics at the University of California, Davis. His major contribution to science are in the areas of cell motility and division and innovations in cell imaging.

Mogilner was born in the Soviet Union on May 22, 1962. He received his doctorate in physics in 1990 at the Ural Division of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in his hometown of Ekaterinburg.

After two years of research at the University of Manitoba, he returned to graduate school at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and received his Ph.D in applied mathematics, a program that combined math and biology. His current work is in computational biology, which combines chemistry, biology, math and physics.

One of Mogilner's research topics is the mitotic spindle and how it is assembled. The mitotic spindle is the what pulls conjoined chromosomes apart during cell division.

Mogilner hypothesized that the chromosomes were surrounded by proteins that directed the microtubules toward them. A few years after, research in Germany confirmed his prediction. His key papers on the subject have been cited hundreds of times; the most cited one, in Biophysical Journalhas been cited 614 times by October 2014.

He is Associate Editor of the Bulletin of Mathematical Biology.