His main research area is computational complexity, in particular, the interplay among pseudorandomness, circuit complexity, and meta-algorithms. Kabanets received his PhD from the University of Toronto, under the supervision of Steve Cook. He then spent a year at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and two years as a postdoc at UC San Diego, before joining Simon Fraser University. Kabanets has received several best paper awards from the top theory conferences, as well as the Nerode Prize (2013). He serves on the editorial boards of Computational Complexity and Electronic Colloquium on Computational Complexity (ECCC), and is on the advisory board for the Banff International Research Station (BIRS).