Kimya (Kimi) Abtahi was born in Fresno, CA and grew up in the East Bay. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Communication Studies from UCLA, where she initially envisioned herself working in the entertainment industry. After some self-reflection and volunteer work at the Berkeley Free Clinic’s dental section, Dr. Abtahi decided to pursue her passion for dentistry and received her DMD from Boston University in 2019. She then went on to complete her General Practice Residency at UCSF and was offered a full-time position as an assistant clinical professor for the GPR program. She spent this past year as the attending faculty for the UCSF Dental Oncology Clinic at UCSF Benioff Hospital Mission Bay, where she examined, treated, and cleared patients to undergo chemoradiation therapy for a variety of head and neck cancers. She plans to bring her experience and knowledge of oral cancer manifestations to her upcoming research project, in hopes to educate and provide preventive strategies for her pediatric patients.
Apart from dentistry, Dr. Abtahi loves to draw and paint in her spare time, teach her cat Sophie how to successfully play ‘fetch’, and is also a big fan of home improvement and real estate TV shows. She is incredibly excited to dive into the next two years of pediatric specialty training at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital of Oakland and La Clinica.
