Prof Igor Goryanin is a systems biologist, who holds a Henrik Kacser Chair at the University of Edinburgh, UK. He heads the Biological Systems Unit at Okinawa Institute Science and Technology, Japan. Igor has recently been appointed as an Executive Director of the Skolkovo Biomedical cluster, Russia.

Igor graduated (MSc) in 1985 as an applied mathematician from the Computer Science Department,Moscow Engineering Physical Institute(MEPHI), where he was developing numerical methods and algorithms. Igor Goryanin spent more than twelve years working in the Institute of Biophysics, Russian Academy of Science and obtained his PhD in 1995 at the same Institute. During this time he developed DBSolve, a software for mathematical stimulation and analysis of the cellular metabolism and regulation (Igor is an author for DBSolve). From 1989-1995 he was also CEO and co-founder of Biobank Inc., Russia.

In 1995-1997 Igor worked as a Visiting Computer Scientist at the Mathematics & Computer Science Division, Argonne National Laboratories, USA

He joined GlaxoSmithKline (formerly known as GlaxoWellcome)in 1997. Igor was working on application of modelling and informatics techniques to the pharmaceutical research and development and drugs manufacturing industry. The whole cell modelling of organisms approach developed by Igor has been successfully used to improve drug R&D and manufacturing processes.

In 2005 Goryanin moved to Edinburgh to take the position of a Henrik Kacser Chair in Computational Systems Biology. In 2006 Igor developed one of the first Masters courses in Computational Systems Biology in the UK, currently taught at the University of Edinburgh. He co-founded Centre for Systems Biology at Edinburgh where he was a co-director (2006-20010), and established Edinburgh Centre for Bioinformatics, where he was a director (2005-20010)