During his career, he was involved with most aspects of fiber optics, including fiber fabrication technologies, fiber measurements, nonlinear fiber optics, soliton propagation, fiber lasers and optical amplifiers. The main results included new types of optical fibers such as high-strength hermetically metal-coated, dispersion-decreasing, nitrogen-doped and low-loss highly nonlinear fibers. As a result of his research, new developments in nonlinear fiber optics such as the first observation of soliton self-frequency shift, the discovery of electrostriction mechanism of soliton interaction, generation of a train of fundamental solitons at high repetition rate, and the proposal and experimental confirmation of a photovoltaic model of second-harmonic generation in glass fibers were realized.

Dianov received numerous recognitions over his lifetime including the 1974 State Prize of the Soviet Union for “Neodymium Glass Lasers.” In 1994, Professor Dianov became a Full Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 1998, he received the State Prize of the Russian Federation for infrared fibers and Vavilov Gold Medal for studies of nonlinear processes in optical fibers and the development of fiber sources of radiation in visible and near IR spectral ranges based on nonlinear phenomena.

In 2017, he was recognized with the John Tyndall Award for pioneering leadership in optical fiber development and outstanding contributions to nonlinear fiber optics and optical fiber amplifiers. The John Tyndall Award is presented to an individual who has made outstanding contributions in any area of optical-fiber technology, including optical fibers themselves, the optical components used in fiber systems, as well as transmission systems and networks using fibers. The Award is jointly presented by The Optical Society and IEEE Photonics Society and is funded by Corning Incorporated.