Maxmen was an undergraduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, where she majored in biology and English.

She moved to the East Coast of the United States for graduate studies, where she received a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from Harvard University.

[1] Her doctoral research, published in the journal Nature, suggested that sea spiders belong to an early lineage of arthropods and that their claws may be similar to the 'great appendages' seen in fossils dating back to the Cambrian explosion.

She writes about issues related to evolutionary biology, health technology, science policy and medicine.

[4] During Ebola virus epidemics, Maxmen reported from Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.