Andrei Kholkin has received his MSc degree in Physics from the St. Petersburg State University and the Ph.D. degree in Solid State Physics from the A. F. Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. His Ph.D. thesis supervisor was Prof. G. A. Smolensky, a pioneer of ferroelectricity and multiferroicity in Russia and worldwide. Until 1993 he has been a research staff member in the Laboratory of Ferroelectricity and Magnetism at Ioffe Institute where he studied kinetic phenomena in ferroelectrics and high-temperature superconductors. He held several research positions at Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research (Germany), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (Switzerland), and Rutgers University (USA). Since 1999 he is a research coordinator and head of Advanced Microscopy of Functional Materials Laboratory of CICECO - Aveiro Institute of Materials of the University of Aveiro (Portugal). His group develops novel multifunctional materials (including ferroelectrics, multiferroics, biomaterials, and ionic conductors) and scanning probe microscopy techniques such as Piezoresponse Force Microscopy and Electrochemical Strain Microscopy for their study. His current research interests span from multiferroics (bismuth ferrite and magnetoelectric composites) to polar biomaterials and energy harvesting systems and to graphene/graphene oxide. He co-authored over 500 technical papers in the area of functional materials including numerous reviews and book chapters (h-index 52). He was a coordinator of three European projects on multifunctional materials and coordinated many national and bilateral programs in this area. He currently serves as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control (TUFFC). He is a member of editorial boards of several scientific journals and serves in advisory boards of international conferences on ferroelectrics. He was a guest editor of four Focused Issues of Journal of Applied Physics (2010-2013), Special Issue of MRS Bulletin on Nanoelectromechanics (2009), and Special Issues of TUFFC (2006-2007, 2012). During last several years, he was a co-chair of the Technical Program Committee of IEEE ISAF-ISIF-PFM conference (Singapore, 2015), co-chair of the International Conference PFM-2014 (Russia), co-chair of Technical Program Committee of the Joint IEEE UFFC Symposium (Czech Republic, 2013), general chair of the 22nd ISAF conference (Portugal, 2012), general co-chair of the 21st ISAF conference (Canada, 2011), and general chair of the 6th and 11th European Conferences on Applications of Polar Dielectrics (ECAPD) held in Portugal. Also, he was a co-founder of the new conference series “Piezoresponse Force Microscopy and Nanoscale Phenomena in Polar Materials (PFM)” started in 2009 in Portugal and continued in Japan, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Russia, Singapore, S. Korea, Germany, USA, and other countries. Dr. Kholkin is a member of the Ferroelectric Standing Committee and Ferroelectric Web Editor of IEEE. He was a recipient of the “Excellency” award from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) in 2004. Dr. Kholkin was awarded by the title of IEEE Fellow in 2012 “for contributions to electromechanical characterization methods and applications" and got Ferroelectrics Recognition Award in 2015. He gave more than 70 plenary and invited lectures during his scientific career. Dr. Kholkin was a visiting professor/researcher at a number of research organizations and universities across the globe: Shonan Institute of Technology (Japan), Materials Science Institute (Spain), Prince of Songkla University (Thailand), Institute of Physics (Latvia), University of Oulu (Finland), Université de Valenciennes, Université de Picardie Jules Vernes, Ecole Centrale Paris (France), State University of São Paulo (Brazil), and Ural Federal University (Russia).