I am an Assistant Research Professor and a member of the James Webb Space Telescope MIRI and NIRCam science teams at Department of Astronomy and Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona.

I study star formation, gas, and dust properties of distant galaxies that are only 3 to 5 billion years after the Big Bang (redshift of z~1-3). I use ground-based observatories, Keck, LBT, VLT, and ALMA, and space telescopes, Hubble, Spitzer, Herschel, and soon JWST, to study how galaxies form and evolve throughout cosmic time.
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I was born and raised in Tehran, ​​capital of Iran, the city that never sleeps and has four seasons throughout the year, including snow in winter (yes, not all of Iran is a desert!). I got my Bachelor's degree in Physics from the University of Tehran in 2011, and moved to the US to continue my graduate studies. At the University of California at Riverside, I received an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and graduated with a Ph.D. in Physics in September 2017 (advisor: Naveen Reddy). I was a NASA Hubble fellow from 2018-2021 at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona.

​Aside from research, I am very proud of the two astronomy outreach initiatives that I started: Staryab educational astronomy website in Persian, and the MESCIT math tutoring and mentorship program. Click on the links on the right to learn more about my outreach activities.

Recently, my work has been highlighted on the University of Arizona Postdoctoral Association, check it out here.

​Other than research and outreach, I love reading and traveling to learn about different cultures and explore the wonders of our planet, like Antarctica!