Nikolai Tsyganenko received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Geophysics at the University of St. Petersburg in 1970 and 1973. From 1973 to 1992 he was employed as a staff scientist at the Institute of Physics of the same University where he worked on the problems of modeling the geomagnetic field, physics of the magnetospheric currents, and the dynamics of the charged particles in the geospace. In 1992 he came to the Laboratory of Extraterrestrial Physics where he has been continuing his research on the development of the data-based models of the magnetosphere, as an NRC fellow (1992-1994) and then as a Chief Scientist at Raytheon ITSS Corporation (1994-present).