Inside Look: A Chemistry Renaissance Blossoms in the Office of Lecturer Kayane Dingilian (BS ’16)

Kayane Dingilian in her office in Crellin Laboratory. Credit: Bill Youngblood

By Omar Shamout

Although she went to graduate school more than 2,000 miles away, Kayane Dingilian (BS ’16) felt like she was back in her undergraduate days in Pasadena when she defended her doctoral thesis in chemical engineering at The Ohio State University. That is because three members of her PhD committee were fellow Caltech alums.

“My lab mates were telling me, ‘You’re not going to have an exam. You’re going to talk about what it was like at Caltech.’ I kept saying ‘No, you don’t understand. They’re going ask the hardest questions! I’m terrified!’” Dingilian recalls, laughing.

The process went smoothly for Dingilian, who received her PhD in 2020. One of the faculty members on her committee, Isamu Kusaka (PhD ’98), paid her a compliment that still brings a smile to her face. “He asked me what I wanted to do next, and I said, ‘I want to teach at the university level.’ He said, ‘I am very happy to hear that because I think you would make a really good teacher.’ I had little stars in my eyes. I'll never forget that moment.”

Dingilian did a postdoc at Georgia Tech before returning to Caltech in 2023 as a lecturer of chemistry and chemical engineering, teaching three classes a quarter, including as primary instructor for Introduction to Chemical Engineering (ChE 10), Transport Phenomena (ChE 103 b), and Chemical Equilibrium and Analysis, (Ch 14), among others. The Irvine, California, native says she has gravitated toward chemistry since high school because she loves making things with her hands and craves the instant gratification of concocting a solution in a lab and seeing how it reacts to other chemicals. Dingilian says she also enjoys sleuthing out the “little mysteries” of chemistry.

“Suppose you hand someone a white compound or a clear solution and ask, ‘What is it?’” she says. “A chemist knows you can’t trust what something is just by looking at it. But there are so many chemical tools that you can use to figure out what you’re holding; that gets me excited from a laboratory perspective.”

It is more than the lab that brings Dingilian joy. Evidence of her many hobbies abounds in her basement office in the Crellin Laboratory of Chemistry, from sheet music to French history books to action figures from the video game World of Warcraft—specifically of her favorite character, Lich King Arthas. “He’s a fallen prince who turned into the king of the dead. Very, very cool,” she says.

Dingilian occasionally melds her interest in role-playing games (a hobby she shares with many of her students) with her course curriculum. After playing a quest in World of Warcraft that invoked the chemical principles of acid–base neutralization, she wrote a problem set for her General Chemistry (Ch 1 b) section (Dingilian is the course coordinator) that followed a similar storyline. “In the quest, there are mineral pools that have gotten out of balance, and you have to neutralize them,” she says. “I had the students calculate the amount of acid they needed to neutralize basic pools of two strengths and describe what was going on chemically in each scenario.”

A choral singer and lover of classical music since she was a kid, Dingilian joined the Caltech Glee Club as an undergrad and immediately returned to the group when she got back to campus. She appreciates that the club is open to any member of the community, not only students. “I can go there and meet tons of people who all just want to sing and have a really good time. Nancy [Sulahian] is a phenomenal choir director who always brings a smile to our faces. When we sing things from the Renaissance or the Baroque era, I feel like I’m time traveling.”

Her appreciation for the 18th century can also be seen in some of the art and objects around her office. A print of Thomas Gainsborough’s The Blue Boy (painted circa 1770) sits near her favorite decorative mug, which is adorned with figures dressed in ornate 18th-century clothing. “I love the sheer artistic opulence of it all,” she says, noting that visiting Versailles, the palace built by her favorite monarch, Louis XIV, is on her bucket list.

There are numerous elegant chemistry-related items in her office as well, including jars of colorful chemicals, vibrantly stained beakers, and various periodic tables that hang around the space. “I like my office to be a bright, fun space,” she says. “Sort of like an alchemist’s or apothecary’s workshop.”

When it came to preparing for her new role at her alma mater, Dingilian credits Mike Vicic (PhD ’99), a teaching professor of chemical engineering at Caltech, with giving her plenty of sound advice—even when she was a student. “Everyone in chemical engineering has Mike as a senior, if not before,” she says. “He was instrumental in helping me realize my passion was teaching. He was our unofficial career advisor, and now he’s always happy to discuss what works and what doesn’t in class, and to help me frame things and navigate my position as an early career educator.”

Signed picture frame and beakers

Dingilian worked as a teaching assistant at The Ohio State University while completing her PhD. A group of seniors who took one of her classes signed the picture frame. She decided to make it a tradition, asking Caltech students in her Fundamental Techniques of Experimental Chemistry (Ch 3 a) class, which she co-teaches with Jeff Mendez, to sign beakers at the end of the quarter.

World of Warcraft Lich King figurines

The Lich King Arthas (aka the Jailer of the Damned, Lord of the Scourge, Dark Lord of the Dead) is Dingilian’s favorite character from World of Warcraft, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. “His fate got twisted,” Dingilian explains. “All he wanted to do was protect his people, and then he got cursed.” As with her involvement with the Glee Club, Dingilian enjoys the chance to connect with others while doing one of her favorite hobbies. “I love getting to interact with so many people when I play. You meet people from everywhere. I even met my best friend while playing World of Warcraft, and we are like family.”

The Blue Boy by Thomas Gainsborough and decorative mug

Gifts from her mother, these items reflect Dingilian’s fascination with European history and culture of the 1700s. “My mom is always keeping her eyes open and gets me these 18th century things,” Dingilian says. “I have so many mugs. I display the prettier ones whose designs I don’t want to wear down as decoration.”

Oxygen, Acids, and Water by Antoine Lavoisier

Dingilian’s love of chemistry and French history connect in the person of Antoine Lavoisier, a leading 18th-century chemist and nobleman who spent significant sums of his own fortune on public improvement projects. “He was one of the key people who said that chemistry should become a formal mathematical science,” Dingilian says. “He was nobility but progressive for his time. The woman next to him is his wife, [Marie-Anne], who was also a brilliant chemist and documented many of his experiments. She translated work by English chemists into French, so he could understand it. I like to think of them as a power couple.”

Chemistry paraphernalia

Dingilian loves the tactile nature of chemistry, and her office is filled with knickknacks that students admire—and play with—when they stop by for a chat. These items include a tall density thermometer and, Dingilian’s favorite, a blue hand boiler gifted to her by her middle school science teacher Mrs. Barbara Orosz. “I like having things like these around so it feels like a science museum when you walk in,” she says.