About Me

I currently work as an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream at the University of Waterloo, teaching courses at the interface of Science and Business.

Before joining Uwaterloo, I was an engineer with the Engineering Capability Development program at the Canadian Space Agency, supporting radiation analysis, systems engineering and safety and mission assurance for several space missions and programs in Canada, including Canada's contributions to the Lunar Gateway and its Lunar Rover Mission.  Concurrently, I taught Creativity and Innovation for Entrepreneurs at McGill University.

Prior to that, I was an Executive Research Coordinator and the Group Manager for the Programming Languages for Artificial Intelligence (PLAI) Group at UBC, focusing on managing some of our research projects with DARPA, along with applying for grant programs and developing relationships with industry to build novel AI applications based on research activities in our group. I was also a sessional lecturer at the UBC Department of Physics, the Engineering coordinator at Selkirk College, and Director of Engineering at LDC Solutions, a small consulting company in Canada. From 2014 to 2022, I also support Skolkovo Foundation in their selection of grant recipients as a member of the Export Board for the Space and Telecommunications Cluster.

In 2019, I worked as a Technical Consultant with Defence Research and Development Canada, helping model different classes of unmanned aerial systems, analyze their failure modes. From 2014 to 2018, I was a European Commission funded Marie Curie Early Stage Researcher Fellow at ISI Foundation in Torino Italy,  where I worked as part of the ITN-WALL project on modeling magnetic phenomena in nanostructures. 

Before that, from 2010 to 2012 I worked at the Combustion and Propulsion  group at the University of Toronto's Institute for Aerospace Studies,  developing a computational methodology based on machine learning to develop surrogate mixtures for aerospace fuels. This role was preceded by internships and research assistantships at the Multidisciplinary Design Optimization, and the Space Systems Research Center at K. N. Toosi University of Technology in Iran, where I  worked on system level modeling and design optimization of space launch systems.

Since 2009 I have also been active in teaching, most notably acting as teaching assistant for the fourth year Aircraft Design course and the first year Engineering Strategies and Practices course at the University of Toronto, both hands-on project based design courses. From 2011 to 2019, I was also an outreach instructor with the University of Toronto Engineering Outreach Office, delivering STEM outreach courses as part of the DEEP Summer Academy.

Within my professional community, I served as the Chair of the Space Generation Advisory Council from 2016 to 2018, having served in other roles since 2012. I also serve as a Chair of the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) Space Education and Outreach Committee (SEOC) and Vice-Chair of the IAF Workforce Development-Young Professionals Programme Committee (WD-YPP).

When not conducting research or volunteering with professional organizations, I work with organization such as Let’s Talk Science and the Ontario Online Research Coop to educate the next generation,  or act as a consultant with organizations such as the Skolkovo Foundation with their start-up incubation programs. 

This website summarizes some of the projects I worked on, my background and some activities I am up to right now.