Alexey Ryazanov is a biochemist and a molecular biologist, currently working as a Professor in the Department of Pharmacology at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical school. The team led by Ryazanov discovered a new class of protein kinases — alpha-kinases. One of the alpha-kinases, elongation factor-2 kinase (eEF2 kinase), can regulate the global protein synthesis rate and is implicated in cancer and aging.