Vitali Kononenko was born in 1972 in Pavlograd, Dnepropetrovskaya Province, USSR. In 1998, he graduated from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT, Physical and Quantum Electronics Department) as a research physicist. From 1998 to 2001, he was a postgraduate student at MIPT. V. Kononenko received his Ph.D. degree in 2006. In 2020, he defended his doctoral thesis on "Laser-stimulated processes on the surface of diamond". Since 2002, he has been working at the General Physics Institute, Moscow, Russia, now as a leading researcher in the Department of Light-Induced Surface Phenomena, Laboratory of Laser Surface Optics. In 2003, V. Kononenko was awarded the State Prize of the Russian Federation for his work "Development of Methods for Calculation, Modeling and Production of Elements of Power Diamond Diffraction Optics for IR Lasers".  V. Kononenko is the author of more than 100 articles in various scientific journals and co-author of four collective monographs. His research topics cover a wide range from laser–matter interaction and plasma physics to carbon materials and nanotechnologies, etc.