Nikolai I. Voropai is Director of the Energy Systems Institute (Siberian Energy Institute until 1997) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Irkutsk, Russia. He is also Head of De¬partment at Irkutsk Technical University. He was born in Belarus in 1943. He graduated from Lenin¬grad (St. Petersburg) Polytechnic Institute in 1966 and has been with the Siberian Energy Institute since. N.I. Voropai received his degree of Candidate of Technical Sciences at Leningrad Polytechnic Institute in 1974,