Mogilner was born in the Soviet Union on May 22, 1962. He received his doctorate in physics in 1990 at the Ural Division of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in his hometown of Ekaterinburg.

After two years of research at the University of Manitoba, he returned to graduate school at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and received his Ph.D in applied mathematics, a program that combined math and biology. His current work is in computational biology, which combines chemistry, biology, math and physics.^{[citation needed]}

One of Mogilner's research topics is the mitotic spindle and how it is assembled. The mitotic spindle is what pulls conjoined chromosomes apart during cell division.

Mogilner hypothesized that the chromosomes were surrounded by proteins that directed the microtubules toward them. A few years after, research in Germany confirmed his prediction. His key papers on the subject have been cited hundreds of times; the most cited one, in Biophysical Journal^[1] has been cited 614 times by October 2014.^[2]

He is an Associate Editor at the Journal of Cell Biology and Bulletin of Mathematical Biology.

• [1]
• Choi, Colin K.; Vicente-Manzanares, Miguel; Zareno, Jessica; Whitmore, Leanna A.; Mogilner, Alex; Horwitz, Alan Rick (2008). "Actin and α-actinin orchestrate the assembly and maturation of nascent adhesions in a myosin II motor-independent manner". Nature Cell Biology. 10 (9): 1039–1050. doi:10.1038/ncb1763. PMC 2827253. PMID 19160484.
• Keren, Kinneret; Pincus, Zachary; Allen, Greg M.; Barnhart, Erin L.; Marriott, Gerard; Mogilner, Alex; Theriot, Julie A. (2008). "Mechanism of shape determination in motile cells". Nature. 453 (7194): 475–480. Bibcode:2008Natur.453..475K. doi:10.1038/nature06952. PMC 2877812. PMID 18497816.
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