Kiyan Abel

Biomedical Engineering Student | 2026 Goldwater Recipient | 2025 NSF REU Fellow | Incoming Amgen Scholar @ UC Berkeley

Irvine, California, United States

About

Being goal oriented, I understand the importance of creating a plan, and tracking progress, while making incremental adjustments to maximize chances of successfully achieving the goal. This method has served me in academics, athletics and in my personal life, and has allowed me to develop time management skills and efficient work habits through balancing my social life with the demands of biomedical engineering, while proving to maintain high quality outputs in both aspects. I value the development of interpersonal relationships to create effective working environments. I lead by example by completing my work promptly and strive to support and encourage others.

Experience

  • Amgen Scholar at University of California, Berkeley
    Jun 2026 - Present · 1 mo

    Keasling Lab Metabolic Engineering

  • Undergraduate Researcher at UC Irvine
    Jan 2024 - Present · 2 yrs 6 mos

    Liu Lab - Applied directed evolution to optimize protein function and improve receptor-binding affinity for therapeutic use. - Leveraged advanced techniques like yeast surface display and fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) to identify high-affinity protein variants. - Led protein engineering initiatives for targeted therapies in cancer and neuromuscular disorders. - Designed and implemented innovative genetic engineering strategies to enhance library transformations and selection efficiency.

  • NSF REU Fellow at Rosetta Commons
    Jun 2025 - Aug 2025 · 3 mos

    Ljubetic Lab - Created novel stable protein assemblies that showed binding and diffusion along engineered tracks in vitro. - Optimized the design pipeline by integrating early-stage geometric and interface-quality filters to eliminate unstable or structurally incompatible candidates - Demonstrated proof-of-concept motion using mass photometry and TIRF-based diffusion tracking.

  • Undergraduate Researcher at Stanford University
    Jun 2024 - Sep 2024 · 4 mos

    Angelo Lab Predicting relapse in Triple Negative Breast Cancer primary tumors - Cell segmentation and Cell phenotyping - Unsupervised single-cell analysis and feature engineering - Predictive modeling Multiplexed Ion Beam Imaging: - Immunohistochemistry and Antibody Staining Acknowledged contribution to: "QUICHE reveals structural definitions of anti-tumor responses in triple-negative breast cancer." Jolene S. Ranek, Noah F. Greenwald, Mako Goldston, Christine Camacho Fullaway, Cameron Sowers, Alex Kong, Silvana Mouron, Miguel Quintela-Fandino, Robert B. West, Michael Angelo. bioRxiv, 2025. DOI: 10.1101/2025.01.06.631548v1.

  • KEQ Enterprises (4 mos)
    • Research and Marketing Intern
      Jun 2024 - Sep 2024 · 4 mos

      Providing scientific expertise and content generation support for inbound and outbound marketing campaigns tailored to small and mid-sized biotech companies

    • Full-stack Developer
      Jun 2024 - Sep 2024 · 4 mos