Dr. Vladimir Ovtsharenko in the spider lab at the American Museum of Natural History.

Dr. Vladimir Ovtsharenko is a research scientist in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), and Curator of the Arachnological Collections at the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Dr. Ovtsharenko's research is on spider taxonomy: the science of identifying and classifying species according to their evolutionary relationships. Since the AMNH houses the largest spider collection in the world, with over a million spider specimens, and the arachnological research carried out there is among the best in the world, it is an ideal place for Vlad to work.

Vlad grew up in the Caucasus in southern Russia. As a boy he was fascinated with all aspects of nature and collected beetles and butterflies for fun. In high school his interest in nature focused on spiders. The local university offered courses for advanced high school students. Vlad enrolled in these courses, which included excursions to collect insects and spiders for study back in the laboratory. The professor allowed the students to choose which group of arthropods they wanted to study. Vlad chose spiders but was discouraged by the professor, who thought that the lack of literature on spiders would make their identification too difficult for a high-school student. Rather than feeling discouraged, Vlad was motivated by the lack of information, persisted in studying spiders, and has studied them ever since.

While pursuing his M.S. in Biology at St. Petersburg State University, Vlad studied the spider fauna of the Caucasus Mountains. He earned a Ph.D. in entomology and arachnology from the Zoological Institute, part of the Academy of Sciences in the former U.S.S.R., studying ground spiders that live in the European part of the former U.S.S.R. Vlad spent about 15 years at the Zoological Institute. As a curator, Vlad founded the Arachnological Society of the Soviet Union.

Vlad has worked with spider collections in the major museums of the United States, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia, and has collected spiders on all five continents. The author of some 40 scientific and popular articles, as well as an active teacher, Vlad has taught at the St. Petersburg Pedagogical University, the St. Petersburg State University, the Education Department of the AMNH, and at Suffolk Community College on Long Island, New York.