He received his Ph.D. in Physics from Moscow State University, Russia in 2002. He served as a postdoc at Toyohashi University of Technology, Japan, and later as a postdoc and then a research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin. He joined the faculty of Queens College in 2013. Dr. Khanikaev studies photonic and plasmonic nanostructures and periodic media with broken time-reversal symmetry in the presence of magnetic materials. His recent work focuses on engineering topological order and nonreciprocity in photonic metamaterials with magneto-optical and bianisotropic responses.