Ksenia Aleynikova received her Bachelor's (2012) and Master's (2014) diplomas in plasma physics from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT). She started her scientific career in the Kurchatov Institute, Moscow, Russia, in 2011 under the supervision of Dr. S. Konovalov. The main focus was on the development of a runaway electron model for the ITER disruption mitigation system. During her Master internship in ITER, St Paul lez Durance, France, in 2013-2014, she was working on linear MHD analysis of post disruption plasmas under the supervision of Prof. Dr. G. Huijsmans 

She started her Ph.D. under the supervision of Prof. Dr. P. Helander at Max-Planck-Institut fur Plasmaphysik, Greifswald, Germany, in 2015, at Stellarator Theory department. Ksenia was studying the analytical theory of kinetic ballooning modes (KBMs) in magnetically confined toroidal plasmas. 

In 2018, Ksenia entered her first postdoctoral position at Max-Planck-Institut fur Plasmaphysik, Greifswald. It is a joined program of Max Planck Institut and Princeton Plasma Laboratory - MPPC. The main topics of her interest are thresholds for the destabilization of the KBM for different W7-X configurations, the influence of electromagnetic effects on different instabilities, and the development of a predictive model for the current profile evolution during the current-induced crashes in Wendelstein 7-X.

Her numerical tools are: DINA ( 2D free-boundary plasma equilibrium solver ), Mishka (ideal stability MHD code), Castor (Complex Alfvén Spectrum of TORoidal plasmas), JOREK (non-linear MHD code), GS2, GENE (gyrokinetic codes), VMEC ( MHD equilibrium solver) and SPEC (Stepped Pressure Equilibrium Code).