Dr. Kiana Aran (she/her) is the founder of the Aran Nebula Foundation.

She is an Associate Professor of Medical Diagnostics and Therapeutics at Keck Graduate Institute, a member of the Claremont Colleges, the Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Cardea Bio, and a visiting Assistant Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Aran also serves as a Consultant of Drug Delivery and Medical Diagnostics for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

She received her undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from the City University of New York in 2007 and her Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Rutgers University in 2012. She then continued her postdoctoral studies in bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley and was a recipient of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) postdoctoral training fellowship at the Buck Institute for Aging Research in 2015. Her research efforts focus on designing novel biosensing platforms, using 2D nanomaterials, for early disease diagnosis as well as utilizing biology as tech elements for a variety of biosensing applications. In addition to biosensing, she combines various engineering modules to develop tools to better understand the process of aging. Dr. Aran’s scientific vision is to explore the utility of nano-electronic systems to develop transformative and customizable platforms for multiomics applications and commercialization of these platform.

Her efforts have been recognized within the scientific community by the Clinical OMICs 10 under 40 Award, Athena Pinnacle Award in Life Sciences, and Nature Research Awards for Inspiring Women in Science: Scientific Achievement Category’s Overall Winner. Dr. Aran is also the recipient of numerous government grants to develop the next generation of electronic biosensors.

Dr. Aran enjoys spending time with her son, painting, traveling, biking, and exercise. In addition, she is very passionate about providing educational opportunities to others.