Russian State University for the Humanities
Since 1985, Starostin had been developing STARLING a linguist's workplace software. He was assisted in his work by Murray Gell-Mann, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist. At the time of his death, he was a professor at the Russian State University for the Humanities, a visiting professor at the Santa Fe Institute, and a frequent guest lecturer at Leiden University in the Netherlands, where he was awarded the degree of Doctor honoris causa in June 2005.