Ilya Tsvankin received his M.S. (1978) and Ph.D. (1982) degrees in geophysics from Moscow State University in Russia. From 1978 to 1989 he worked at the Institute of Physics of the Earth in Moscow and was deputy head of the laboratory "Geophysics of Anisotropic Media." After moving to the U.S. in 1990, Ilya became a consultant to the Amoco Production Research Center in Tulsa. Since 1992 he has been on the faculty of Colorado School of Mines, where currently he is professor of geophysics and co-leader of the Center for Wave Phenomena. Ilya's research has focused on seismic modeling, inversion, and processing for anisotropic media, fracture characterization, nonlinear elasticity, and time-lapse seismic. For his pioneering work in seismic anisotropy, in 1996 he received the Virgil Kauffman Gold Medal Award from SEG. In 2011 Ilya was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Physics (IOP) in recognition of his contribution to the advancement of physics as a discipline and a profession. His monograph "Seismic signatures and analysis of reflection data in anisotropic media," published in 2001 and reprinted in 2005, is regarded as a major text in the field. A new book by Ilya and his long-time collaborator Vladimir Grechka, "Seismology of azimuthally anisotropic media and seismic fracture characterization," was published in 2011 by SEG. Since 2001, Ilya and Vladimir have been teaching a two-day course on anisotropy as part of the SEG Continuing Education Program.