Balaji Selvam was a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Diwakar Shukla at the University of Illinois. For the RIPE project, he researched the molecular interactions responsible for the inhibition of the enzyme Rubisco, providing insights for the potential engineering techniques to reduce inhibition. He earned his doctorate from Queens University in the United Kingdom. His work is published in many peer-reviewed journals including Biochemistry and the Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling.