An Engineer Turned Computational/Data Scientist
Life in Iran
I was born and grew up in Tehran, Iran. Thinking of Tehran takes me back to some of the sweetest memories of my life. I had the privilege of being accepted to the NODET (National Organization for Developing Exceptional Talents), where I spent seven amazing years in Allameh Helli middle/high school. I found the best and dearest friends there and I am still in contact with many of them.
In 2004 I entered Sharif University of Technology to study mechanical engineering. Sharif is the most prestigious university in science and engineering in Iran; think of it as the Iranian version of MIT! I got the opportunity to get to know some brilliant minds and decent people which made my experience really good. It is highly competitive to remain in a good academic standing and I had to study hard to keep up with the class. Well, for me, that didn't happen until after the sophomore year was over! My poor grades at the end of that year was a much needed wake up call. I realized that I need to take school seriously and establish habits that can serve me for a lifetime.
About a year before I finish my bachelors, I started applying for grad schools in Iran. Unlike many of my friends from high-school and undergrad who ended up in the US and Canada, I wanted to stay close to my family. I just wasn't mentally prepared to move outside of Iran yet. In 2009 I started my masters degree in biomedical engineering at Amirkabir Univeristy of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic), another high-profile school in Tehran. My experience in AUT wasn't as exciting as Sharif but still a lot of memorable moments and a lot of learning which is always good! I had the opportunity to teach a few classes which certainly improved my leardership skills.
After graduating from AUT, a new chapter in my career began when I started to work as a mechanical engineer at a local company in Tehran. The job required new skills: a lot of programming, creating reports and documentation, solving complex problems, testing and measuring the performance of systems, and so on. I actually enjoyed my job. I was surprised by how engaging non-academic full-time employment could be. I applied the skills I had developed as an academic researcher and constantly taught myself new skills as I grew professionally. Before starting my first job, I used to think of industry as an uninspiring, soulless environment full of tediuos moments and boredom. But I was simply wrong.
The pay was Ok but nothing spectacular. Money for me wasn't everything. It certainly contributed to a lot of good moments that I had when shoppoing, traveling, or having new experiences but it also can never guarantee happiness. After working for two years I realized I'm facing a big issue at work that I could no longer overlook. I was no longer passionate and money couldn't help me with resolving that. The passion to learn and discover, to explore and invent. The tendency that deeply rooted in me during the time that I spent in middle school, high school, and undergrad, while I was constantly working and competing with all the brilliant minds around me. I was feeling that something is missing, and that I wanted to do more. It didn't take long before I started raaching out my friends abroad to seek their opinion reagrding moving back to academia. I was facing a big predicament which I had essentially been supressing for the past year with many uncertainties around every corner; I was 28 years old at the time and I kept asking questions like: Is it too late to start a phD? Can I handle the pressure of moving to a completely different environment? Am I gonna be able to see my parents anytime soon if I go to the US (I am talking about 2014 when, if granted, Iranian students applaying to engineering disciplines would most likely obtain a single entry visa)?
Moving to the US
Long story short, here I was in a blizzard-hit, semi-shutdown Boston in Januray 2015, staritng my phD in mechanical engineering at Northeastern University. Coming from a relatively hot and dry climate, it took me a few weeks to get adapted to the new climate. I officially started working on my first phD project after I met with my first advisor, Jaydeep Bardhan. One of the smartest and brightest people that I've ever met in my life. He was always excited about what he was doing, and more importantly, he always knew what he was doing! Even though I was a mechanical engineering student, my research technically fell into the category of Computational Biochemistry. More specifically, my first project was to implement a newly developed nonlocal theory for continuum models of biomolecular electrostatics using BEM++ which is a python library to solve boundary element problems. Obviously a lot to learn for someone with mechanical engineering background! I had to take multiple courses from other departments such as electrical engineering and chemistry to increase my domain knowledge. Jay was extremely lucid when explaining anything. He was very good at simplifying difficult concepts in a way that everyone could understand. It was during my conversations with Jay about our research that my desire to gain a deeper understanding in numerical methods and linear algebra started to grow. He was so inspiringly smart that I could spend hours, enjoying reading heavy math books and papers. I was done with my qualifying exam and everything was going great in terms of learning and research when all of a sudden Jay let me know that he's decide to move to industry. I was very frustrated at the beginning but didn't really have a choice; I tried my best to take it as an opportunity to grow, learn, and broaden my theoretical knowledge in a completely new field; My new advisor, Safa Jamali, was very supportive of me and my development throughout the rest of my phD. I started working on a new subject, Fluid-Structure Interaction simulations of flexible structures using OpenFOAM, while also continuing my research under the supervision of a new co-advisor from chemical engineering department. My new co-advisor, Steve Lustig, also very supportive, was guiding me through my research on development of the SLIC solvation model, originally introduced by my former advisor Jay Bardhan and our colleague Matt Knepley. Steve's goal was to expand the application of SLIC to predict the solvation thermodynamics properties of larger scale problems such as bio-membranes and 2D polymer netwroks. It was a challenging two and a half years until I finally got my phD in August 2020.
After I got my phD, I had a chance to visit my family after almost 6 years. Meeting them after so long was such a relief after even though it wasn't the perfect time to visit my family due to COVID restrictions.
Motivation behind creating Alimr.dev
The main motivations behind creating this website:- I realized that a lot of the things that I've been doing my research/free time is not out there for people to see. I have been learning a lot of cool concepts during my phD and I thought it would be great to reflect on what I've learned.
- One of the biggest challenges that I faced as a phD student working in a multi-disciplinary field was to find the right tone/language when I was presenting my work. My research was developing novel numerical methods for molecular electrostatic problems; an active field of research with applied mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists, bioinformaticians, and chemists/biochemists. I had to carefully select my slides, add/remove equations, visuals, and proofs depending on the community that I was presenting. I realized that the more I spent time on selecting my slides and practicing my presentation, the better I felt after my speech. Adding contents to this website is the same story; Knowing that one might go through my projects and read the tutorials is a huge motivation boost and it really makes me think deeper about the contents that I'm putting on my website. From the audience perspective, I can think of many many times that I had to go through multiple web pages to figure something out before I finally find an answer that I fully grasp.