About me — Kier Preve, Physics student at UNSL

Destiny isn't shaped by certainties,
but by the questions we choose to follow. Grok, from my novel Andra

Almost a physics graduate, and a music producer on the side.

Before all this

When I was 8, my parents bought me my first computer.

They told me learning computers was “a key to open doors”.

That same year I took piano lessons, but not for long.

Between games and the Encarta encyclopedia, I discovered I could make things. My first creations were games and animations in PowerPoint; then came text adventures and my first prototypes in RPG Maker and Game Maker.

A little later, thanks to a former Ukrainian monk, I learned I could build web pages in FrontPage and run basic commands in the terminal.

At 13, an uncle gave me a telescope. For the first time I saw the craters on the Moon, the rings of Saturn and the moons of Jupiter.

I used Stellarium to figure out which planets I was seeing in the sky, and what the constellations were called.

Around that time I spent hours reading about space in Encarta, and somehow a CD of Sophie's World landed in my hands. Back then I didn't think of it as science: it was just curiosity.

Also at 13, I wrote a monologue for a contest about climate change run by the Ministry of Education of San Luis. They gave me a diploma naming me “protector of the environment against climate change”. It was far too big a title for a 13-year-old who still had so much to learn about the world's complex problems.

On top of that, the prize was a small MP3 player, with a little blue screen and 1 GB of memory. With it I started building, for the first time, something I could call “my music collection”, and I took it everywhere I went. At some point I even dared to update its firmware.

Only as an adult did I realize how much it shaped me: that's where my fascination with technology began, with things you can hack, and with a more personal way of connecting with the music I loved.

At 15 or 16 I got into music. With my dad's guitar at home, I started teaching myself, with a book, with the internet, and later with a watchmaker who played classical guitar. Lessons took place in his watch shop, learning pieces like Monti's Csárdás.

Around those years I also played in a teenage rock band put together by drummer Black Amaya. Our first gig wasn't at Luna Park, Buenos Aires' legendary arena: it was at a retirement home.

The path

In 2012 I left home to study Computer Engineering. It was the first time I lived on my own, somewhere I didn't know anyone, and I never quite settled into a routine. That first year went badly, and I came out convinced that math wasn't for me.

The following year I enrolled in Music Production at the National University of San Luis (UNSL). That one I did finish: I graduated as a Music Producer.

Around then I started writing a short time-travel story, which wouldn't see the light of day until much later.

2017 was a hard year. I had finished my degree and couldn't find my place in the job market. I started studying programming seriously, more to keep myself busy than as part of a plan.

That same year I ended up helping someone with an astronomy assignment, and found myself explaining things I hadn't touched in years. That week I started watching physics videos, and kept going far longer than I'd planned.

For a while I hesitated between three degrees: Anthropology at UNC, Computer Science, and Physics. I talked with several professors at UNSL —Diego Valladares, Moira Dolz and others— and together they won me over. In 2018 I started Physics, also at UNSL.

The science bug had never really gone away.

The pandemic years hit me hard. I had to retake a course for the first time in my life, and for a long time I doubted whether I could make it through the degree. Those were probably the hardest years.

As soon as all that was over, in March 2023, I published my first novel: Dentro del origen.

A few months later I earned my intermediate degree as University Assistant in Applied Physics.

Now

In 2025, Juan Pablo de Rosas —a professor I took experimental physics with and worked on a couple of projects with— mentioned that Dr. Leonardo Makinistián was looking for someone for a project in magnetobiology. I didn't wait long: I wrote to him myself.

That same year I took his course, and in March 2026 I formally started my thesis. We clicked quickly, and working with him is a real pleasure.

I work in the lab and study for my final exams right there. At night I write the novel or make music.

And some afternoons I save for friends, over mate or coffee.

The telescope is still in Villa Larca.

— Kier