Victor A. Kovtunenko was born in 1966 in Karaganda, USSR. In 1990, he graduated from the Faculty of Mathematics and Mechanics of the Novosibirsk State University, Russia, and defended his dissertation (Ph.D.) in 1994. Since 1990, he has been working at the Lavrentyev Institute of Hydrodynamics of the Siberian Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Leading Researcher). In 1998--2000, he was the recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship at the Mathematical Institute A of Stuttgart University, Germany. In 2002, he was awarded the Lise Meitner Fellowship of the Austrian Science Foundation. He is currently working at the Institute for Mathematics and Scientific Computing of the University of Graz (Project Leader) and part-time at Graz University of Technology, Austria; see https://homepage.uni-graz.at/victor.kovtunenko/ accessed on 14 December 2023.