Dr. Vasily Titov is the Director of Tsunami Research at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA's) Pacific Environmental Marine Laboratory (PMEL). He has been involved with tsunamis and tsunami modeling for nearly 20 years. This is nearly his whole professional career. Today, he is one of the world's leading experts on tsunamis.

Vasily was born and raised in the Russian portion of the Soviet Union. He went to Novosibirsk State University to study mathematics. Vasily was always interested in the applying his mathematics to the physical world and studying tsunamis caught his interest.

After earning his degree in mathematics, Vasily went to the University of Southern California (USC). There he studied tsunami modeling and earned a PhD in coastal and ocean engineering. At USC he was able to bring mathematics and tsunamis together. 

When he finished his PhD, Vasily was hired by NOAA to work on tsunami models at PMEL. His work at PMEL allowed him to use math as he wrote programs that modeled tsunami behavior. To test the models, data from past earthquakes that created tsunamis was used. The model's prediction was then compared with the actual tsunami and any differences were used to reprogram the model. 

Vasily's team wrote the computer programs that describe the behavior of tsunamis. His team developed models to simulate three stages of tsunami evolution. The first model predicts how a tsunami wave would be generated at the epicenter of the earthquake, the second model simulates the behavior of the wave in the open ocean and the third forecasts the behavior of the wave at the coastlines and in harbors.

Today, Vasily's models are becoming more accurate. Vasily hopes that with enough data, faster models and tsunami education programs, tsunami forecasts will be able to save every person from harm.