Somewhere in the space between a chimpanzee and a human being, something extraordinary happened. Not just language or music or the ability to imagine futures that don't exist yet... but something deeper. The universe, through us, began to reflect on itself. We build tools for that reflection.
You can close your eyes and imagine a future that doesn't exist yet... hold it, shape it, and work backward until you find a way there. No other species on Earth can do that. From so simple a beginning, something in us learned to reach forward... and the ones who use that ability deliberately change everything, starting with themselves.
Billions of years of evolution produced something that, as far as we know, has only happened once: a form of matter that can reflect on its own nature. That's what your brain gives you. Not just survival instincts and pattern recognition... but the capacity to wonder, to question, to know that you don't know.
And yet that same brain comes with beautiful contradictions. We overestimate what we know. We misread what we feel. We hear music in our heads that never quite matches what comes out of our mouths. These aren't flaws. They're starting points.
98%Chimp builds tools grounded in peer-reviewed neuroscience that close the gap between who you think you are and who you actually are. Not with judgment. With curiosity, data, and the occasional humbling dose of reality.
Because adapting, evolving, and thriving starts with seeing yourself clearly.
Every tool we build begins with a mirror... helping you see the distance between who you think you are and who you actually are, so growth becomes possible.
Awareness without action is just anxiety. Our tools translate insight into daily habits, feedback loops, and measurable change.
The goal isn't optimization. It's a fuller, more accurate, more human experience of being alive in this particular brain.
Stories that build confidence while they lull to sleep. Positive affirmations dissolved into bedtime narratives, played over soft melodies... designed to be started and forgotten. Neuroscience has never sounded this much like a lullaby.
Rate your confidence before answering each question, then discover the gap between what you thought you knew and what you actually know. Part game, part mirror... entirely humbling. Science has never been this fun to be wrong about.
The first app combining SAM emotion science with right-hemisphere focused audio interventions. Track your emotional state, then receive personalized therapeutic guidance designed to meet you exactly where you are... delivered with the warmth of a human voice.
The brain learns fastest when multiple senses reinforce each other. Unison teaches you to sing on pitch through real-time visual feedback, creating a visual-auditory loop that builds accurate pitch and muscle memory far more effectively than ear training alone.
The idea that wouldn't leave. During his final years at McGill, Shahin became preoccupied with a question: what if parents and clinicians had longitudinal neurodevelopmental data instead of annual snapshots? The question was too specific to hand off... so he learned to code. Meelo is an iPad-based assessment platform using cross-modal tasks, theory of mind measures, and executive function activities — game-like interactions children enjoy that reveal developmental trajectories over time.
"The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself."
Carl Sagan
"The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance."
Nathaniel Branden
Neuroscience PhD · Principal Mobile Engineer
McGill University · Founder of DK Derby, BrainFit & Unison
Two careers that looked separate for a long time... and turned out to be the same career all along.
I spent years studying the brain at McGill, then years building software at scale. To outside observers those looked like different lives. They weren't. Both fields are fundamentally about information systems, feedback loops, and emergent behavior. One studies the most complex system we know of. The other builds systems. I saw that from the beginning... it just took the world a little longer to catch up.
The scientific work spanned scales... from individual molecules inside a single neuron to the whole-brain imaging of perception and behaviour. But the question underneath was always the same: how does this biological system give rise to experience? How does matter begin to feel, to wonder, to know? That question never let go.
In 2015, an idea that had been living in my mind since my final years at McGill finally pulled me toward a keyboard. I wanted to build a tool for tracking children's neurodevelopment continuously... not just at annual checkups. The idea was too specific to hand off, so I went to coding school. That project became Meelo. The detour became a career.
98%Chimp exists at that intersection. Every product draws on peer-reviewed neuroscience, designed by someone who has spent time on both sides of the research table and who believes deeply that understanding yourself is not a luxury. It's the foundation everything else rests on.
The tools are rigorous because the science demands it. They're human because anything less would miss the point entirely.
Loomi is built with my brothers Soushiant (social scientist) and Shawn (business strategist)... three dads who asked: what if technology could nurture our kids instead of distracting them?
Beyond the products, I host The Falcon & The Whale — a podcast exploring the creative and scientific dimensions of understanding ourselves.
We're building the tools. You bring the curiosity.
Choose what interests you. We'll only reach out when it matters.