Kiara Nirghin

She grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa. MyBroadband’s profile says that she was raised in Meyersdal, Alberton, the youngest of four children of a businessman father and a housewife mother.⁠[1][2]

Stanford UniversityStanford UniversityStanford University is a research university in California founded by Leland and Jane Stanford in 1885 and opened in 1891.Open the full entry’s news story states that at 13 she contracted bilharzia, lost weight and became jaundiced, and then developed bacterial meningitis, spent weeks in the hospital and took months to recover. The description of her book by Penguin Random HousePenguin Random HousePenguin Random House is a trade book publishing group headquartered in New York City. It was formed on July 1, 2013, by combining Bertelsmann’s Random House with Pearson’s Penguin, and has been wholly owned by Bertelsmann since 2020. Its roots include Random House, which grew out of Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer’s 1925 purchase of The Modern Library and became a general publisher in 1927, and Penguin Books, founded by Allen Lane in 1935. The group operates in more than 20 countries with more than 300 imprints, including Alfred A. Knopf, Doubleday, Viking, Dutton, Penguin Press, Crown and Ballantine Books, and had revenue of €4.981 billion in 2025. In 2022 a U.S. federal court blocked its planned acquisition of Simon & Schuster on antitrust grounds. Its chief executive is Nihar Malaviya.Open the full entry South Africa says that she had to postpone her schooling for hospitalisation, that there was a real danger of her losing her hearing, her sight and the use of her limbs, and that she suffered severe weight loss.⁠[1][3]

In the extract from “Youth Revolution” carried by News24 she writes that she was abnormally underweight, that her hair was falling out in clumps and that her doctor’s appointments were down to once a week; she calls the period a “constant state of undiagnosed medical uncertainty.” She writes that every morning, afternoon and evening her mother opened the medicine cabinet and dispensed her iron, food supplements and vitamins, and was her confidant; that her father had always been the breadwinner and kept money affairs extremely private; and that she and her siblings were never given insight into their parents’ financial affairs.⁠[4]

MyBroadband wrote that in 2017, at 17, she gave a TEDx talk titled “Are we wasting our brains?” in which she explained that her hospitalisation with bilharzia and bacterial meningitis at 13 drove her passion for learning, and quoted her: “I thought if this is the immense pain that my brain can endure, just imagine the possibilities if this powerful machine is used for something more productive?”⁠[2]

Her older sister, Nikhara Nirghin, is a qualified actuary who has worked at Liberty, Deloitte and Goldman SachsGoldman SachsGoldman Sachs is an American financial services group headquartered in New York whose businesses include investment banking, securities trading, asset management, and wealth management. It traces its origins to the commercial paper business Marcus Goldman founded in 1869; it listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1999 under the ticker GS and became a bank holding company in 2008. David Solomon serves as chairman and chief executive officer.Open the full entry. In her interview with City Press she said that her father had always encouraged her to use her platform to inspire.⁠[5][2][6]

On September 27, 2016, GoogleGoogleGoogle is an American technology company founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and incorporated in 1998. It became an Alphabet subsidiary in 2015. Its businesses include internet search, advertising, software platforms, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry announced the winners of that year’s Google Science Fair at its headquarters in Mountain View, CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a U.S. state on the Pacific coast; its capital is Sacramento and its largest city is Los Angeles. California was admitted to the Union on September 9, 1850, as the 31st state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 39,538,223, the largest of any state.Open the full entry, and she, aged 16, took the Grand Prize with a project titled “Fighting Drought with Fruit”; Google’s official blog states that there were 20 finalists from 9 countries that year.⁠[7][8][9]

She was then a Grade 11 pupil at St Martin’s School in Johannesburg. The Grand Prize was a $50,000 scholarship. TimesLIVE wrote on July 19, 2016 that she had become the regional winner for the Middle East and Africa of the fair’s Community Impact Award with a project named “No More Thirsty Crops,” and that the finals would take place in September; TimesLIVE’s article on the Grand Prize described that earlier award as the Africa regional Community Impact Award, with R14,000 in prize money, and called the ceremony the sixth annual awards. In 2019 the Sunday Times likewise described it as the Community Impact Award for the Middle East and Africa.⁠[8][9][10][11]

The full title of her entry as given by BusinessTech was “Combatting drought with a Low-Cost, biodegradable Superabsorbent Polymer made out of orange peels.” She set out to make a superabsorbent polymer (SAP) from the waste of the juice-manufacturing industry that could be put into soil to help crops retain water in a drought, in place of costly, non-biodegradable acrylic products; TIMETIMETIME is an American newsmagazine and media brand founded by Henry Luce and Briton Hadden, which published its first issue on March 3, 1923; it is headquartered in New York and known for its Person of the Year selection and the TIME100 list. Since 2018 it has been personally owned by Marc and Lynne Benioff; its current Chief Executive Officer is Jessica Sibley, and its Editor-in-Chief is Sam Jacobs.Open the full entry wrote that she found that avocado and orange peels could be turned into such a polymer with UV light and heat.⁠[12][13]

Over 45 days she ran three experiments, testing water absorption, soil moisture and the growth of a plant (Ocimum sanctum) in treated soil, and compared her orange-peel mixture with starch-based, pectin-based and acrylic superabsorbent polymers; the process involved boiling, sun-drying, crushing and baking the peels. In her results she wrote that the orange-peel mixture could absorb 76.1% of water, more than the other three materials, and that “The only resources involved in the creation of the ‘orange peel mixture’ were electricity and time.” TimesLIVE wrote that she worked on the project for about two months.⁠[14][9][8]

BusinessTech wrote that commercial acrylic superabsorbent polymer retailed for about $2,000 to $3,000 a metric ton and that the orange-peel mixture could retail at $30 to $60 a ton; TimesLIVE wrote that the orange-and-avocado mix could be produced at R848 a ton, against around R28,000 a ton for chemical absorbents; Farmer’s Weekly gave the production cost as R850 a ton. Farmer’s Weekly called her the first African participant to win the fair’s grand prize and quoted Justin Chadwick, chief executive of the Citrus Growers’ Association, as saying that it would be very interesting to see how the product worked on a commercial scale.⁠[12][8][15]

In her entry she wrote, “I absolutely love the captivating subjects of chemistry and physics in school,” and “I vividly remember at the age of 7 experimenting with vinegar and baking soda solutions in plastic cups.” Smithsonian Magazine’s article on the finalists says that she was a passionate cook interested in molecular gastronomy who hoped to become both an agricultural scientist and a molecular-gastronomy chef. In a later interview with Assembly she recalled being nervous in front of the judges and thinking, “They are experts, I’m just a child,” until a fellow entrant pointed out that nobody knew her project better than she did.⁠[9][14][10][16][17]

Setting out the background, Africanews wrote that South Africa and neighbouring countries were then facing one of their worst droughts in 45 years and that South Africa received 403 mm of rain in 2015, about 66% of the annual average.⁠[14]

TIME’s list “The 30 Most Influential Teens of 2016,” published on October 19, 2016, included her at 16; the entry said that she hoped to develop the material for commercial use so that any country could use it in dry seasons, and quoted her on the win: “It was very unexpected—I was so excited.”⁠[13]

The Alberton Record’s article of October 25, 2016 called her a local star and listed others on the same list: Sasha and Malia Obama, the actors Skai Jackson and Gaten Matarazzo, and the gymnast Laurie Hernandez.⁠[18]

The We Are Family Foundation listed her, at 18, among its 2018 Global Teen Leaders, with the project “No More Thirsty Crops.” The page says that she was a Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) Student Ambassador, that Forbes and TED had invited her to speak about her work, that she planned to implement the polymer in her community by the end of 2018, and that she had developed a way to apply it to water filtration.⁠[19]

The UN Environment Programme’s Young Champions of the Earth site carries a 2018 page for her (Africa region). It says that she lived in Johannesburg and that the sight of empty reservoirs on a drive with her family to the province of KwaZulu-Natal prompted her research into the effects of drought on food and water security; the figures given on the page are that the polymer can hold hundreds of times its weight in water, raises plants’ chances of growth in a drought by 84% and increases food security in disaster-struck areas by 73%. City Press wrote that she was a regional finalist in the programme in 2018.⁠[20][6]

An article that City Press published ahead of her March 2019 talk at the United NationsUnited NationsThe United Nations is an international organization founded in 1945 under the Charter of the United Nations. It has 193 Member States, and its headquarters are in New York City.Open the full entry says that she had given a TEDx talk in Pretoria the previous year, had been featured in Forbes Africa as part of a new wave of “disruptors” and had been rubbing shoulders with some of the biggest names in technology, among them Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Google; she answered City Press’s questions by email from the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry. It quoted her talk: “If we don’t continue looking at the big issues in life, we will continue living with them.” The Assembly interview says that she took a selfie with Sundar Pichai, one of her heroes.⁠[6][17]

Assembly, a publication of the Malala Fund, interviewed her at 18. The article says that she worked with UNICEF South Africa, mentored young women in science and technology, had been named to Cosmopolitan South Africa’s “19 Under 19,” and would enter Stanford University in September hoping to study engineering, weighing biomedical engineering against computer science; she named Malala Yousafzai and Pavni Diwanji, a vice president of engineering at Google, as people she admired, and said, “We need to give girls the necessary resources to create change.”⁠[17]

The Citizen wrote that in 2018 she used the money she had won at the science fair to begin a computer science degree at Stanford University, and that in 2023 she obtained a master’s degree in computer science with a focus on artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction.⁠[5][2]

Stanford University’s news story gives her class as ’22 and says that as a sophomore she declared a computer science major on the biocomputation track and was still investigating whether the polymer produced chemical by-products, whether it had other uses and whether it could protect trees from wildfires; she said, “It also increases food security because, in theory, farmers can make it themselves.”⁠[1]

The same story says that Glamour magazine named her one of its College Women of the Year, that she was chosen for Facebook’s Youth Board, a committee of 10 young leaders, and that she had been invited to address the United Nations several times; of her plans she said, “I want to innovate and solve problems and create products that help people. That’s what I see myself doing.”⁠[1]

Penguin Random House South Africa published her book “Youth Revolution” in January 2019 (paperback, ISBN 9781776093564). The publisher’s description says that the book tells how she overcame serious illness to win the science fair’s grand prize at 16 and that it includes contributions from prominent women in science and education, among them Malala Yousafzai. MyBroadband gives the title as “Youth Revolution: Be The Change” and says that she published it during her second year of studies.⁠[3][2]

The Sunday Times wrote on October 13, 2019 that the book traces her path from a hospital bed to the international stage and examines stalled youth innovation and the risks of a lack of diversity in science and technology; it quoted the theoretical physicist Adriana Marais calling for “a youth revolution, the emergence of a radically different way of thinking.”⁠[11]

In March 2019 she spoke at the official commemoration of International Women’s Day at United Nations Headquarters in New York; City Press had written beforehand that the event was set for Friday, March 8. City Press quoted her: “Never consider your gender a setback, consider it a defining perspective that you bring as a female scientist.”⁠[21][6]

On February 6, 2020 UN Women published her first-person piece, at 19, in its “I am Generation Equality” series. She said that many girls in South Africa shy away from science because they doubt that they belong in it, urged that the stories of women leading in science and technology be shared, and said, “Not listening to young people, will only slow down development.”⁠[21]

She was on the list of the second cohort of Delta Fellows that Human Capital published on September 1, 2021. The list describes her as a computer science student at Stanford University who had interned at Facebook as a software engineer.⁠[22]

In 2022 she and her older sister, Nikhara Nirghin, co-founded the artificial intelligence company Chima, with Nikhara Nirghin as chief executive and herself as chief technology officer; The Citizen wrote that she was 22 when the company started. Y Combinator’s company page lists Chima in the Winter 2023 batch (W23), founded in 2022 and based in San Francisco, and describes it as building infrastructure tools that help large companies customize their generative AI models.⁠[5][23][2]

The founder biography on the Y Combinator page says that Nikhara Nirghin had previously worked at Goldman Sachs and Deloitte Consulting, earned an MBA at London Business School and studied mathematical statistics and actuarial science at undergraduate and postgraduate level, and lists an award from the Reinsurance Group of America for an international best paper on stochastic data modeling.⁠[23]

Beyond Noise magazine ran a profile of her in its Issue No. 03, when she was 23; it calls her a Stanford University alum who launched Chima with her sister and quotes her saying, “Gen Z is entering the workforce stronger than ever.”⁠[24]

On January 6, 2022 the Thiel Foundation announced a new class of the Thiel Fellowship, and she was on the list. The announcement gave her age as 21 and her location as San Francisco, and her project as Rather: “Rather is building financial technology to improve access to net worth building asset classes for the new generation.” It said that the class had 23 members and that each receives a $100,000 grant.⁠[25]

Her author biographies at Freethink and Big Think, her founder page at a16z speedruna16z speedruna16z speedrun is an early-stage startup accelerator program run by the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z); selected teams take part in a 12-week residency in San Francisco and receive up to $1 million in investment.Open the full entry, her personal website and two Fortune articles of 2026 all call her a Thiel Fellow; The Citizen and MyBroadband instead describe her as a Fellow of Thiel CapitalThiel CapitalThiel Capital is an American investment firm founded by Peter Thiel in 2011 that provides strategic and operational support for his investment initiatives and entrepreneurial ventures; Founders Fund, Mithril, Valar Ventures, the Thiel Fellowship, and Breakout Labs were all incubated by the firm or its predecessors. It also invests in startups in its own name, partnered with Pacific Century to sponsor the Bridgetown series of special purpose acquisition companies, and took part in Bullish’s strategic funding round in 2021.Open the full entry.⁠[26][27][28][29][30][31][5][2]

In November 2024 she attended the Earthshot Prize awards in Cape Town and was preparing to speak there. The diary published by Parley for the Oceans says that she wore a Gabriela Hearst design on the green carpet and visited Parley’s AIR Station in Hout Bay with the Sentinel Ocean Alliance; she said that her own “Earthshot” was to go on developing and advocating solutions for water scarcity and sustainable agriculture, and said, “The courage to begin stemmed from a deep-seated desire to help my community during a crisis.”⁠[32]

On December 3, 2024 Forbes Brasil published its account of the Forbes 30 Under 30 honorees in artificial intelligence, which included her and Nikhara Nirghin as co-founders of Chima. The entry says that Chima builds AI systems that imitate “raciocínio humano” (human reasoning) for everyday business functions such as automating repetitive work and that it had $5 million in total funding, from Elad GilElad GilElad Gil is an entrepreneur, investor and author of High Growth Handbook. He co-founded Mixer Labs and Color, worked at Google and Twitter, runs the multistage investment firm Gil & Co, and co-hosts the No Priors podcast with Sarah Guo.Open the full entry, General CatalystGeneral CatalystGeneral Catalyst (GC) is an investment firm founded in 2000 and headquartered in San Francisco, United States, created by Joel Cutler, David Fialkow and Bill Fitzgerald, that backs companies from the seed stage through growth.Open the full entry and Y Combinator. The Citizen describes the list as the AI category of the Forbes 30 Under 30 North America list.⁠[33][5]

MyBroadband wrote that Chima had $5 million in financial backing from Y Combinator, Elad Gil, General Catalyst and Soma Capital and that, by the company’s own account, it had generated more than $40 million in profit.⁠[2]

On May 19, 2025 she published “Vibe coding is rewriting the rules of technology” in Freethink. In it she describes herself as chief technology officer of Chima, a Y Combinator-backed applied AI research lab, working closely with the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI; she writes that she began coding at a young age and at 16 developed her first algorithm, aimed at climate change in South Africa. The article argues that “vibe coding,” a term coined by Andrej KarpathyAndrej KarpathyAndrej Karpathy is an AI researcher and educator, one of the founding members of OpenAI, who served as Tesla’s Director of AI and led the Autopilot computer vision team from 2017 to 2022, founded the AI education company Eureka Labs in 2024, and joined Anthropic in 2026 to work on pre-training research; at Stanford he designed and taught the university’s first deep learning course, CS231n, and he coined the term “vibe coding.”Open the full entry in February 2025, shifts software development from writing code line by line to stating goals in natural language, and warns of security gaps and maintenance debt.⁠[34]

On June 3, 2025 she published “The AI social network war has begun” in Freethink, arguing that as models become commoditized it makes sense for OpenAIOpenAIOpenAI is an artificial intelligence research and product organization founded in 2015 that develops the GPT model series, ChatGPT, Codex and a developer API, and conducts research on image, speech, video and intelligent agents. After its 2025 restructuring, the nonprofit OpenAI Foundation continues to control the for-profit OpenAI Group PBC. Its growth has involved large-scale fundraising and compute partnerships, and has also been accompanied by controversies over governance, copyright, privacy and AI safety.Open the full entry to move toward a social network product.⁠[35]

On July 10, 2025 she published “Gen Z: We must resist the temptation to cheat on everything” in Freethink, criticizing the “cheat on everything” mindset of peers who outsource their thinking to AI and urging people to work through problems on their own before turning to AI. She writes there that she spoke at the Shared Futures AI Forum hosted by Aspen Digital alongside Kara SwisherKara SwisherKara Swisher is a technology and media journalist, podcast host and author who has covered the tech industry since the early 1990s; she hosts the podcasts On with Kara Swisher and Pivot and is editor-at-large at New York Magazine.Open the full entry and Refik Anadol. Aspen Digital’s Shared Futures site lists her under “2026 Speakers,” describing her as co-founder and chief technology officer of Chima and saying that Chima is backed by venture capital investors such as General Catalyst and Y Combinator (“YC” on the page).⁠[36][37]

Fortune wrote in an exclusive on February 9, 2026 that Emanate, which she founded, had emerged from stealth with funding from Andreessen HorowitzAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry (a16z), and that Peter ThielPeter ThielPeter Thiel is an American entrepreneur and investor, a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, and the first outside investor in Facebook. He is a partner at the venture capital firm Founders Fund and founded the Thiel Fellowship, which funds young people to leave college and build new things; his public skepticism of higher education, his support for Trump in 2016, and his funding of litigation against Gawker Media have drawn controversy.Open the full entry, the Reddit co-founder Alexis OhanianAlexis OhanianAlexis Ohanian (born April 24, 1983) is an American entrepreneur, investor, and author, a co-founder of Reddit and the founder of the venture capital firm Seven Seven Six. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 2005, co-founded Initialized Capital, and later expanded his work into women’s sports, climate philanthropy, and investment software.Open the full entry and other prominent angels had also backed it; the article did not disclose the amount raised or a valuation.⁠[30]

The article says that Emanate was founded in 2025, is based in San Francisco and has a team of fewer than 10 AI engineers and product designers; the company serves distributors, service centers and suppliers in the industrial materials sector with a network of autonomous AI agents that take in demand across channels around the clock, look after customer relationships and research new prospects, a market the article puts at $5 trillion, and it says that the company claims its product can raise customers’ revenue by 60% to 80%. The a16z speedrun company page lists Emanate in cohort 006, gives its founding year as 2026 and shows 7 employees.⁠[30][38]

She said in the article, “So far, most AI benefits have gone to Silicon Valley,” and “We’re bringing them to the industries that build America.” Ben HorowitzBen HorowitzBen Horowitz is an American entrepreneur, venture capitalist and business author who co-founded Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) with Marc Andreessen in 2009. He previously led Loudcloud’s transition into Opsware and its 2007 sale to Hewlett-Packard. His writing and investing address startup management, organizational culture and the relationship between technology and cultural industries.Open the full entry, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, said in it, “Our mission is ensuring that America wins the next 100 years of technology.”⁠[30]

Fast Company wrote on May 8, 2026 that Emanate builds AI sales tools for manufacturers, distributors and service providers of industrial materials, from steel building materials to metal piping, covering quotes for custom orders, matching existing customers with the goods they need and finding new customers; its investors include Andreessen Horowitz and M13, she declined to disclose the amount raised, and it had 10 employees. The article says that she had earlier been supported by the fellowship of Alexis Ohanian’s 776 Foundation and by the Thiel Fellowship.⁠[39]

The article says that Emanate’s agents combine AI models with a “harness” of tools the models can call, integrations with ERP software and corporate knowledge bases, and custom configurations; deployment takes eight to 12 weeks, and the aim is a revenue gain of 40% or more for customers, which the article contrasts with AI companies that concentrate on helping customers cut costs through automation. She said, “We capture a full baseline before we go live, and then we track every metric,” and said that the approach could later extend to the electrical and chemical industries.⁠[39]

Fortune wrote in an exclusive on October 14, 2026 that Koch Disruptive Technologies, the venture arm of Koch, Inc.Koch, Inc.Koch, Inc. is a privately held conglomerate headquartered in Wichita, Kansas, United States, and the top-level holding company of the former Koch Industries and its subsidiaries, with businesses spanning energy, chemicals, paper products, glass, electronic components and software. It traces its origins to Wood River Oil and Refining Company, which Fred C. Koch co-founded in 1940.Open the full entry, had made a strategic investment in Emanate, without disclosing the amount, round or valuation; Jon Chisholm, a managing director at Koch Disruptive Technologies, said of the investment, “we believe some of the biggest opportunities lie in helping companies accelerate growth.” The article says that the names of Emanate’s customers are confidential.⁠[31]

In this article she calls the product an “engine,” not a chatbot or an agent: it sits on top of the systems that suppliers already use, pulls scattered knowledge into one place and can reactivate, manage, price and expand accounts autonomously, though it starts with a human in the loop; results are measured by giving the system to one group of accounts and comparing them with the rest of the customer’s business over the same period. She said, “The engine starts with a human in the loop and earns the right to act on its own,” and “Doing nothing isn’t neutral in this market.”⁠[31]

As of November 2026, her founder page on the a16z speedrun site lists her as chief executive of Emanate.⁠[28]

As of November 2026, her personal website calls her a Y Combinator alum and says that she led foundational AI research at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL) as a Senior Researcher, served as an Instructor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University and is now an Advisor to the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI); the site says that her writing has been published in Scientific American, TIME100 Voices, Fortune Magazine, The EconomistThe EconomistThe Economist is an English-language weekly newspaper founded in 1843 and published by the London-based Economist Group, covering financial and political news.Open the full entry, Inc., Fast Company and The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American morning daily newspaper published in New York City. Founded in 1851, it is published by The New York Times Company.Open the full entry.⁠[29]

In the Assembly interview she said that she enjoys Dan Brown, Stephen King and Khaled Hosseini as well as feminist works by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Naomi Alderman, and said, “If you look at my cupboard, half of my books are about feminism and half are about science.”⁠[17]

Her personal website lists ten recommended books: “Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies” by Nick BostromNick BostromNick Bostrom is a Swedish-born philosopher who was founding director of the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford from 2005 to 2024 and is known for his work on existential risk, the simulation argument and his book Superintelligence; now principal researcher at the Macrostrategy Research Initiative, he appeared on the Lex Fridman Podcast in 2020.Open the full entry, “Technics and Civilization” by Lewis Mumford, “Consciousness Explained” by Daniel Dennett, “Complexity: A Guided Tour” by Melanie MitchellMelanie MitchellMelanie Mitchell is an American computer scientist and Santa Fe Institute professor who studies analogy, abstraction and complex systems in artificial intelligence; she developed the analogy-making program Copycat with Douglas Hofstadter and wrote “Complexity: A Guided Tour” and “Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans.”Open the full entry, “Autonomous Technology” by Langdon Winner, “The Art of Computer Programming” by Donald KnuthDonald KnuthDonald Knuth is an American computer scientist and mathematician, professor emeritus at Stanford University, author of the multi-volume The Art of Computer Programming and creator of the TeX typesetting system, often called the father of the analysis of algorithms.Open the full entry, “Supersizing the Mind” by Andy Clark, “Life 3.0” by Max TegmarkMax TegmarkMax Tegmark is an MIT physics professor and AI researcher who worked on precision cosmology and proposed the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis; in 2014 he founded the Future of Life Institute, which works to reduce risks from AI and other technologies, and he wrote Our Mathematical Universe and Life 3.0. He has appeared three times on the Lex Fridman Podcast and was its first guest.Open the full entry, “Thinking in Systems” by Donella H. Meadows and “The MANIAC” by Benjamin Labatut.⁠[29]

The Citizen wrote that she has served on the board of the Google Impact Fund since 2019 and is a fellow of the 776 Foundation backed by Alexis Ohanian; MyBroadband wrote that she was appointed to the Facebook Tech Sustainability Board in her first year at university and remained on it for three years. Fortune calls her the youngest board member of the Google Impact Fund.⁠[5][2][30]

The team section of the Colossal Biosciences website has a page for her that does not state her role at that company; its biography calls her co-founder and chief technology officer of Chima, named to “Most Influential” lists by TIME and The Guardian, one of Glamour’s Women of the Year and a ForbesForbesForbes is an American business media brand that began with Forbes magazine, founded by B.C. Forbes in 1917. It is known for rankings such as the Forbes 400, the World’s Billionaires list and 30 Under 30, and operates Forbes.com, ForbesLive events and licensed editions in 81 countries. Since 2014 a majority stake has been held by the Hong Kong investment group Integrated Whale Media; a 2021 plan to list on the New York Stock Exchange through a special purpose acquisition company was terminated in 2022. It is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.Open the full entry “Generation Disrupter,” a guest writer for The Economist and TIME 100 Voices, and an advocate working with UN Women and L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science.⁠[40]

Her author page at Big Think lists two articles: “From infinite scroll to infinite worlds: How AI could rewire Gen Z’s attention span,” and “AI that acts before you ask is the next leap in intelligence,” co-written with Nikhara Nirghin.⁠[27]

Her author page at Fast Company Middle East lists her article “Why are women being sidelined in the AI race?”⁠[41]

Personal website: https://www.kiaranirghin.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[29][28]

X: Public account: https://x.com/kiaranirghin (opens in a new window).⁠[28][26]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kiara-nirghin/ (opens in a new window).⁠[28]

Emanate: Official website: https://emanate.ai/ (opens in a new window).⁠[38]

Chima: Official website: https://www.withchima.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[23]

Stanford University: Official website: https://www.stanford.edu/ (opens in a new window).⁠[1]

Thiel Fellowship: Official website: https://thielfellowship.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[42]