Dr Maxim Prokchorchik currently holds the position of Charles Gilbert Heydon Research Fellow in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences of the University of Sydney. His main interest is the plant-pathogen interactions of under-investigated microbes and economically important Brassica crops, including canola. He is also interested in genomics, pathogen virulence and plant resistance evolution in a broad range of important plant-pathogen systems. Maxim got his PhD from Massey University (New Zealand) and worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bonn (Germany) and POSTECH (South Korea).