Alexei Yuryevich Smirnov (Russian: Алексе́й Ю́рьевич Cмирно́в; born October 16, 1951) is a neutrino physics researcher and one of the discoverers of the MSW Effect.
[1] Smirnov joined the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy in 1992 as a staff-associate while continuing his affiliation with INR (Moscow) as a leading research scientist.
[8][9][10][11] Currently Smirnov is working on implications of the obtained neutrino results for fundamental physics (quark-lepton complementarity, unification, etc.)
[citation needed] Smirnov is a co-recipient of the 2005 Bruno Pontecorvo Prize "for his prediction and study of the influence of matter on neutrino oscillations".
This is one of the Germany's most prestigious awards in science which enables outstanding scientists and scholars from abroad to spend up to six months at the Humboldt Institute to carry out research on projects of their own choosing.