Zhian Kamvar
Senior Software Engineer at Recast
Beaverton, Oregon, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolZhian Kamvar is a senior software engineer with 13 years of experience blending population genetics research and production-grade R software development. Currently at Recast after roles building community-facing research software at UMass Amherst and designing global lesson infrastructure for The Carpentries, he excels at turning complex scientific workflows into robust, user-friendly tools. His work spans automated dashboards, reproducible literate programming pipelines, and outbreak analytics, with notable open-source contributions improving internationalization and publishing workflows for widely used Carpentries and RStudio projects. Trained as a plant pathology PhD who built genomic pipelines for fungal pathogens, he brings domain expertise to bioinformatics and education-focused tooling. Colleagues prize his ability to simplify transition processes—such as migrating dozens of lessons to a new Workbench—and his quiet focus on accessibility and international reach often surfaces in localization and documentation improvements.
13 years of coding experience
8 years of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Plant Pathology/Phytopathology, Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Plant Pathology/Phytopathology at Oregon State UniversityBachelor of Science - BS, Biology, General, Bachelor of Science - BS, Biology, General at Truman State University
Stackoverflow
2,263reputation
188kreached
15answers
5questions
plot
top-5%
r
top-5%
Github Skills (34)
markdown10
python10
r10
css10
internationalization10
templater10
template-engine10
ruby10
localization10
latex10
markdown-it10
jekyll10
rt10
html10
rmarkdown10
Programming languages (23)
Github contributions (5)
carpentries/lesson-example
Dec 2020 - Jan 2023
Example lesson using The Carpentries lesson template.
Role in this project:
Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:30 reviews, 50 commits, 35 PRs in 2 years
Contributions summary:Zhian contributed to the lesson-example repository, modifying various files related to the project's style and functionality. Their commits included incorporating new styles and merging updates from a different styles repository. They also modified configuration and checking scripts related to the lesson's structure, dependencies, and markdown processing.
carpentries-infrastructurelesson-templateenglishcarpentries
carpentries/glosario
Jun 2020 - Jan 2023
A multilingual glossary for computing and data science terms.
Role in this project:Localization / Internationalization Specialist
Localization / Internationalization SpecialistContributions:127 reviews, 84 commits, 66 PRs in 2 years 7 months
Contributions summary:Zhian primarily focused on improving the internationalization and accessibility of the glossary project. This involved modifying HTML templates and CSS to support right-to-left languages and improve the layout for different language directions. The changes included adding 'dir' attributes to control text direction and integrating a new glossary layout. The user's work ensures the project can be used by a wider audience and supports proper rendering for various languages.
nlptranslationsglosariosciencedata-science
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