Oleg was born in Novosibirsk, Russia in 1976.  He spent most of his early childhood there, in the district of Akademgorodok, a Siberian scientific center.  In 1979-81 he and his family spent two years in Mozambique.  In 1986, Oleg's family moved back to Moscow.  Oleg attended School #130 in Novosibirsk, and School #79 in Moscow as well as the Moscow Chemical Lyceum (aka MCL or MHL).   

In 1992, Oleg started his studies in the Higher Chemical College of the Russian Academy of Sciences (aka HCC or VHK) as part of only third entering class.  During his first year in college, Oleg joined the laboratory of Professor Nikolai Ustynyuk in the Nesmeyanov Institute of Organo-Element Compounds (aka INEOS) as an undergraduate researcher.  In the Ustynyuk group, Oleg gained experience working with vinylidene complexes of manganese. In 1995, Oleg spent a summer doing research on organosilicon dendrimers at the University of Kentucky in the laboratory of Professor Folami Ladipo.  Oleg then returned to Russia to finish his coursework at HCC.  Encouraged by the positive experience at UK and the appeal of Lexington, Oleg returned to UK in the Fall of 1996 to start his Ph.D. studies while remaining an HCC student on leave.  He obtained his chemistry Diploma at HCC in 1998.  Oleg's research in Kentucky focused on unusual steric effects of modified calixarene ligands in the chemistry of titanium.  He defended his Ph.D. dissertation in the Spring of 2000. 

Upon graduation, Oleg moved to Bloomington, Indiana to join the group of Professor Ken Caulton as a postdoctoral associate.  Oleg's investigations in the Caulton group delved into the new chemistry of ruthenium and rhenium in a pincer ligand context.  Among other things, Oleg was the group solvent czar during his postdoctoral spell.

In the spring of 2002, Oleg accepted an offer to join the Department of Chemistry at Brandeis University as an assistant professor of chemistry.  He arrived in July of the same year to assume his new position.  Oleg was promoted to the rank of associate professor with tenure in 2006.  In January of 2009, Oleg relocated to Texas A&M University where he is now Professor of Chemistry. His research interests are in synthetic organometallic chemistry and its applications in catalysis and energy-related problems. In 2011-2022, Oleg served as his department's Graduate Recruitment Coordinator.  During 2013-2022, Oleg served as an Associate Editor for Inorganic Chemistry Frontiers. In 2018, he was appointed to the Emile and Marta Schweikert Professorship in Chemistry.