hi, i’m kian!

i’m a PhD student at caltech in the lab of dr. rob phillips, where i study how life adapts to changing environments — especially when humans are driving those changes.

i also spend time in the angeles national forest as a volunteer fire lookout and trail maintainer.

major prior iterations of me have been an inaugural new science fellow at harvard, a lab tech at the salk institute, an undergrad at ucsd, and a high school student in malaysia.