Yuri MakeenkoYuri Makeenko received his PhD in theoretical and mathematical physics from the Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics (ITEP), Moscow. He has been a staff member at ITEP since 1983, and since 1993 has been a visiting professor at the NielsBohr Institute, Copenhagen. He has given lecture courses at universities throughout Europe and has published numerous papers and review articles. Professor Makeenko has been working on non-perturbative quantum field theory since 1975. His research has covered four-dimensional conformal field theories and the 1/N-expansion of QCD, where he derived in 1979 an equation presently known as the Makeenko-Migdal equation or the 'loop equation', in collaboration with A.A. Migdal. In the early 1980s he explored lattice gauge theories, including the Monte Carlo simulations, and went on to work on matrix models and string theory in the 1990s. His subsequent work has focused on matrix theory and non-commutative gauge theories. Read More Read Less