I have been at Ohio State since 2002, becoming a tenured Associate Professor in 2008 and a Full Professor in 2015. Before that, I spent several years in New Jersey working on my Ph.D. at Rutgers University, in Prof. Barbara Ryder's research group. (No, New Jersey is not as bad as you have heard.)

If you are wondering about my name: Atanas comes from here. People usually call me Nasko: Atanas ends with "nas", and "ko" is a standard suffix for creating short names in my native Bulgaria. Now, someone please explain to me how you get Dick from Richard.