Vladimir M. Shkolnikov heads the Laboratory of Demographic Data at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock (Germany) and serves also as Director of the Center for Demographic Research at the New Economic School in Moscow. His published works are devoted to diverging mortality trends and their determinants, demographic methods for measurement and decomposition of disparity, and biomarker profiles of aging populations. V. Shkolnikov is Director of the Human Mortality Database, Co-Director of the Human Fertility Database and is actively involved in other important data projects.