Maxim Kapralov was a research fellow at The Australian National University. Maxim studied variation in genes encoding for the key photosynthetic enzyme Rubisco to understand its biochemical, ecological, and physiological variation in plants. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees in biology from the Ural Federal University. He went on to earn his doctorate at the Russian Academy of Sciences. He has published work in PNAS, Molecular Biology and Evolution, and other journals.