Dr. Plamen Krastev received a PhD in theoretical nuclear physics from University of Idaho (2006) and was subsequently a postdoctoral fellow at  Texas A&M University-Commerce (2006-2008), and a joint SciDAC Fellow at San Diego State University and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) with the Universal Nuclear Energy Density Functional (UNEDF) project (2008-2011). He also received a MS in Space Plasma Physics from University of Texas at El Paso (2003), and a BS/MS in Laser Physics from Sofia University (1997).

In 2011 Dr. Krastev joined the FAS Research Computing group at Harvard University, where he facilitates cutting-edge computationally intensive research projects across science and engineering departments. He assists researchers with application and workflow design and optimization, and provides in-depth scientific software engineering support. He also delivers lectures and workshops on High Performance Computing (HPC) and efficient use of advanced cyber-infrastructure resources. Over the last several years, Dr. Krastev has been also involved in national and regional efforts such as ACI-REF/CaRCC and XSEDE/ACCESS. He is passionate about designing and implementing innovative solutions for big-data analysis and efficient software development. 

In his current research, Dr. Krastev combines ideas and techniques from quantum theory, general relativity, high performance computing (HPC), and artificial intelligence (AI) to address outstanding problems in fundamental physics, and astrophysics. Most recently, he has been interested in designing and applying state-of-the art deep learning algorithms for detection and parameter estimation of gravitational waves (GWs), and deducing the equation of state (EOS) of dense nuclear matter from observations of neutron stars. He pioneered the application of AI for detection of GWs from binary neutron star mergers. His broad research interests include artificial intelligence, high performance scientific computing, theoretical nuclear physics and astrophysics, and quantum computing. 

He is a proposal reviewer and a panel review member for the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the European Research Council (ERC), and a member of the American Physical Society (APS) and the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS). Since 2007 he has been an affiliate of the Institute for Nuclear Theory (INT). Since 2020 he has also been affiliated with the NSF AI Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions (IAIFI).

Since 2020 Dr. Krastev has been serving as a Guest Editor for the Galaxies journal.