About
Shi En Kim (she usually goes by Kim) is a Malaysian-born freelance science writer and a Popular Science‘s spring 2022 editorial intern. She writes broadly about different topics, from the wacky uses of spider webs—by both humans or spiders themselves—to garbage collectors in outer space. For now, she can’t decide which beat she has the most fun writing about. She’s also currently finishing up her PhD at the University of Chicago, studying the physics of nanosized objects.
Experience
Kim joined PopSci as an editorial intern in spring 2022. Previously, she freelanced for outlets such as National Geographic, Scientific American, Hakai Magazine, and Slate, among others. In the summer of 2021, she was a AAAS Mass Media Fellow at Smithsonian Magazine. Kim likes to cover any topic that sparks her fancy, from the natural world to the latest cutting-edge technologies that might shake up modern society. Nevertheless, she’s particularly drawn to stories that have strong community ties, and that unfold a little closer to her motherland, Malaysia.
Education
Kim graduated from the California Institute of Technology with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering. She is in her final year of her PhD program in molecular engineering at the University of Chicago. It was in graduate school when she decided to pivot from discovering new science in the lab to writing about it for a general audience.
Highlights
- Eclectic science writer who writes on topics much broader than her graduate research
- 2021 AAAS Mass Media Fellow at Smithsonian Magazine
- Bylines in National Geographic, Scientific American, Hakai Magazine, and Slate
Favorite weird science fact
A diaper-donning ferret once saved Fermi National Laboratory’s particle accelerator in the 1970s. It turns out, Felicia was small enough to help the engineers literally ferret out metal shavings in the construction tube, which were shorting out crucial magnets.
