I'm a biologist. Since early childhood I have been surrounded by people inspiring my interest. My first tutors were my older cousine Sergey Melikyan with his collection of bugs, my aunt botanist Era Yeramyan the dad's friend surgeon and hunter Edik Muradyan his stories, trophyes and guns, and my dad Lev who is being a scientist has been supporting my initiatives.
i have been collecting rocks, plants, bugs and herps since early age of 4 years. Biology was my favorite course since middle school. In 1990-1993 along with my High School classes, I was volunteering at the aqua-terrarium of the Yerevan Zoo. Later on, I continued my education as a veterinarian. Along with studying veterinary medicine I was working at the Center for Conservation of the Biodiversity of Armenia of the Institute of Botany. Right after graduating the Veterinary School of the Armenian Agriculture Academy in 1998 I got accepted by the aspiranture of the Armenian National Academy of Sciences. Aspiranture was a haven to me and in 2002 I presented my thesys"Ex Situ Conservation of Rare and Endanereg Psammophilic Plants and Plant Comminities of Ararat Valley" and earned my Doctoral degree in biology.
Since then I have been doing ecological research as a member of different interdisciplinary teams as well as teaching. In 2008 I left everithing I had in Armenia, and moved to Watertown, a settlement near the Boston (Massachusetts, US). Now I work in the diagnostic reference laboratory, but I'm very passionate about wildlife and I continue my field observations and endless learning every day.
The area of my primary expertise are amphibians and reptiles, but my current interests are far beyond herps. Recently I started intensively study lichens.
Besides iNaturalist I contribute my photos and data to the number of open source projects like Arkive, CalPhotos, EMBL Reptile Data-Base, other private projects. Also, I write and edit articles for Wikipedia.