Hello! Welcome to my home page!

I am a physicist and like many of my physics folks, I am also a data scientist (“Is Data Scientist Still the Sexiest Job of the 21st Century?“). Unlike many of my physics folks, I am also an educator and a social impact entrepreneur. I enjoy sharing the beauty of science and technology with the world, especially with those who are at the beginning of the road.

I love initiating new projects and building teams with a culture of passion, growth, and belonging. My new gig is to make data science documentaries through my nonprofit. You can watch my first film on YouTube.

In my professional career so far, I have worked as a physicist in academia, data scientist in healthcare, data science consultant in health tech and energy, and an executive director in educational nonprofit.

I am the co-founder and executive director of the Digital Age Academy Inc., an online educational technology nonprofit that prepares youth for the future of work through project-based entrepreneurial development programs and data science.

In health tech, I developed statistical and machine learning models to detect and predict cardiac diseases and cancer (Who would have thought I would ever work on heart instead of galaxies?). As a consultant, I worked for different clients, including in health tech and energy sectors.

Before transitioning to health tech and EdTech, I was an academic for several years. After I received my Ph.D. in physics from Louisiana State University, I spent a few years as a postdoctoral scholar at the Pennsylvania State University and as a faculty at Columbia University. In my last academic position, I was a lecturer in the discipline of physics at Columbia University and a NASA-funded researcher at the Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory, studying the most violent phenomena in the Universe using data from several high-energy astrophysical observatories in a multi-messenger and multi-wavelength discipline. I developed novel solutions for astrophysical source discoveries through exploring and exploiting machine learning techniques. Read more in research. 

Science education and outreach are also among my top interests and activities. I love sharing new ideas and great experiences with the world! Staryab is where I share the exciting ongoing astrophysical research in simple words for Farsi speakers. Read more in education and outreach.  At Columbia, I taught a core course called “Frontiers of Science” for five consecutive semesters covering neuroscience, physics, astrophysics, biodiversity, biochemistry, and Earth/climate science. The main goal was to instill skills of the scientific approach to inquiry in our students and to help them develop scientific habits of mind, in the context of scientific disciplines. 

I love reading books in different genres including fiction, science fiction, self-help, etc. See the list of some of my favorites in each genre in favorite books.

I write on LinkedIn or in my blog every now and then about science, ideas, research, teaching, leadership, entrepreneurship, and generally my observations of the world.

I will be happy to hear from you! Send me a message here.