Oleg is originally from Estonia. After doing a Bachelor’s in Gene Technology at Tallinn Technical University, he moved to Aarhus in Denmark for his PhD studies in the lab of Poul Nissen, focusing on elucidating the structural biology of heavy metal transporters using X-ray crystallography. Afterwards, he moved to Oxford University to do an EMBO-funded postdoc in the lab of Simon Newstead, where he worked on determining the structure of kidney drug transporters. His next move was to the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology in Dortmund, Germany, where he did a 6-year postdoc in the lab of Stefan Raunser, learning the intricacies of single particle cryoelectron microscopy and cryoelectron tomography, and applying these techniques to investigate extremely large bacterial toxins and their biogenesis. Since May 2024, Oleg leads his own group at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology on the subtropical island of Okinawa in Japan, where he uses cryoelectron tomography to investigate corals from a structural biologist’s perspective.