Dr Ivan Maksymov is a polymath scientist educated at Kharkov physics school founded by the Nobel prize laureate Lev Landau and at the leading optics and photonics research centre in Tarragona, Spain. Ivan was an Australian Research Council Future Fellow from 2018 to 2022 and now he is an Associate Professor at the AI and Cyber Futures Institute, where he conducts both theoretical and experimental research on physical foundations of AI. He made significant contributions in the fields of electron devices, plasma physics, optics and nanophotonics, nanomagnetism, acoustics, fluid mechanics, biophysics and brain-computer interfaces. His famous experiment involving living sedated earthworms vibrated on a subwoofer in his backyard in Seymour, VIC earned him global popularity after the award of the IgNobel prize in 2020. As a former national level cyclist and basketball player, in his free time he rides a road bike and plays tennis. He also learns playing euphonium and enjoys eating very hot chilli peppers. He is a dual citizen of Australia and Ukraine.