Lavasoft, the original anti-malware company, today announced that Alexander Adamov will lead its new, expanded malware labs. Adamov joins Lavasoft from the Design and Test Lab, a research lab that provides malware analysis services for Kaspersky Labs.

With Lavasoft, he will head one of the world’s most advanced malware labs and will be tasked with conducting research and technology development to keep the company’s flagship product, Ad-Aware, at the vanguard of anti-malware technology. More than 400 million users worldwide trust Ad-Aware for maximum protection of their online identities and computers.

The expanded Lavasoft labs will now be based in Kharkiv, Ukraine.

In addition to advancing new technologies to market—including new anti-malware and reputation-ensuring capabilities for the cloud, mobile devices and other platforms—the Lavasoft Malware Labs will also be tasked with providing detailed research and analysis of zero-day threats as they are discovered.

An additional charter for Adamov’s team will be education; they will tap into the collective knowledge of university students studying cybersecurity at some of the world’s most prestigious academic institutions, by creating internship programs, webinar lecture series and other online networks. Adamov was a frequent lecturer for the Kaspersky Academy webinar series.

“Adding Alexander to our team will create tremendous opportunities for an expanded Lavasoft Malware Labs,” said Daniel Assouline, Lavasoft’s CEO. “His leadership will extend the capabilities of our researchers to create the next-generation of anti-malware technologies across new platforms.”

“I am very excited to join Lavasoft and look forward to developing the next-generation of technologies to push the capabilities of Ad-Aware to new and exciting places,” said Adamov. “There is a huge opportunity to build on the company’s already-excellent malware labs by focusing further on product development and education.”

A frequent speaker at industry events and the former host of a popular anti-malware webinar series for Kaspersky, Adamov holds a Master of Philosophy in Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery from the University of Wales (WIT) in the UK, and a Master’s Degree in Computer Engineering from the Kharkov National University of Radio Electronics in the Ukraine.