Kian Faizi

I'm a PhD student and Caldwell graduate fellow at Caltech, where I'm advised by Rob Phillips. I study how biology shapes planetary geochemistry, with a focus on how organisms assimilate and transform matter.

I like being outside — especially in the mountains, and ideally with no more than I can carry on my back. In seasons past I've occasionally volunteered as a fire lookout and trail maintainer in the Angeles National Forest.

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, a high school student in Malaysia, and a gastrulating embryo in San Diego.