Donev grew up in
Veles, North Macedonia. At age 17 he began studies at the
State University of New York at Plattsburgh, a small town in northern New York State. He soon transferred to
Michigan State University in East Lansing from where he graduated at the top of his class in Physics. He earned a Ph.D. degree in Applied and Computational Mathematics from
Princeton University in 2006 under the guidance of
Salvatore Torquato. His thesis work concerned packing of hard elliptical particles. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the
Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and later won the
Luis W. Alvarez Postdoctoral Fellowship to work at the
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. In 2010 Donev joined the
Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences,
New York University as faculty. Donev died on November 2023 before the age of 45. He is mourned by family, friends, students, colleagues and collaborators. == Research ==