The United States has always been known as the land of opportunities. Individuals with diverse backgrounds who have immigrated to the United States are in many instances successful in various fields. Iranian immigrants are no different and this section of our website is dedicated to the introduction and video interviews with Prominent Iranian Americans.
See complete list of Prominent Iranian-Americans.
Jasmin Moghbeli
(Major, U.S. Marine Corps) NASA Astronaut Candidate Summary: Jasmin Moghbeli has been selected by NASA to join the 2017 Astronaut Candidate Class. She will report…
Abbas Ardehali
Dr. Abbas Ardehali, a professor of surgery and medicine in the division of cardiothoracic surgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, has been…
Ali Khademhosseini
Ali Khademhosseini is a Professor at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and a faculty at the Harvard-MIT’s Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST), Brigham and…
Behnaz Sarafpour
Behnaz Sarafpour is an Iranian-American New York City-based designer who introduced a line of women’s apparel bearing her name in 2001. She attended Parsons School of Design,…
Cyrus Nowrasteh
Cyrus Nowrasteh was born in September 19, 1956 and is an Iranian-American screenwriter and director of theatrical films, television shows, and made-for-TV movies. He is best known…
Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Seyyed Hossein Nasr was born on April 7, 1933 and is an Iranian-American University Professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University, and a prominent Islamic philosopher. He is the author…
Amir Naderi
Amir Naderi was born in August 15, 1946 in Abadan and is an Iranian-American film director, screenwriter, and photographer. He is best known for The Runner and Vegas: Based on a True Story.…
Isaac Larian
Isaac Larian was born in March 28, 1954 in Kashan, Iran and is an Iranian-American businessman and entrepreneur. He is the Chief Executive Officer of MGA Entertainment, the biggest privately owned toy company…
Siavash Alamouti
Siavash Alamouti is an Iranian-American engineer who is best known for the invention of the so-called Alamouti space–time block code, filed in 1997 and patented jointly with Vahid Tarokh. Alamouti’s code is…
Omid Kordestani
Omid R. Kordestani was born in 1963 in Tehran, Iran and is an Iranian-American businessman who works as senior advisor to the Office of the CEO and…
Ehsan Yarshater
Ehsan Yarshater was born in April 3, 1920 and is the Iranian-American founder and director of The Center for Iranian Studies, and Hagop Kevorkian Professor Emeritus…
Alecko Eskandarian
Alecko Eskandarian was born July 9, 1982 in New Jersey and is an Iranian-American former soccer player. He is of Armenian-Iranian descent and is the son of former soccer player Andranik Eskandarian, who…
Soroosh Sorooshian
Soroosh Sorooshian is an Iranian-American distinguished professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California Irvine and currently serving as the Director of the Center for Hydrometeorology and Remote Sensing. Dr. Sorooshian was born…
Amir Ali Sadollah
Amir Ali Sadollah was born August 27, 1980 and is an Iranian-American professional mixed martial artist. Sadollah was born in Brooklyn, New York but raised in Richmond, Virginia to an Iranianfather…
Kami Barzini
Kami Barzini is an Iranian-American wrestler. He was born in Iran and started wrestling at the age of 12. Kami 2x Cadet/Junior National Champion in…
Reza Aslan
Reza Aslan was born on May 3, 1972 and is an Iranian-American writer and scholar of religions. He is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of…
Ramin Bahrani
Ramin Bahrani was born on March 20, 1975 and is an Iranian-American director and screenwriter. Bahrani was born in North Carolina, to Iranian parents. He received his BA from Columbia University in New York City. His first…
Homayoon Kazerooni
Homayoon Kazerooni is a roboticist and professor of Mechanical Engineering at theUniversity of California, Berkeley. Dr. Kazerooni is the director of the Berkeley Robotics and Human Engineering Laboratory and also the…
Maz Jobrani
Maziar Jobrani is an Iranian-American comedian and actor. He performs stand-up live comedy around the world, and has appeared on various popular talk shows, TV…
Farzad Bonyadi
Farzad “Freddy” Bonyadi was born in 1959 in Tehran, Iran and is an Iranian-american professional pokerplayer based in California. He has won 3 World Series of Poker bracelets. Bonyadi moved from…
David B. Samadi
Dr. David B. Samadi is the Chairman of Urology, Chief of Robotic Surgery at Lenox Hill Hospital, and Professor of Urology at Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of…
Ferial Govashiri
Ferial Govashiri currently serves as the Personal Secretary to the President of the United States. She got her bachelor of political science from University of…
Sarah Shahi
Ahoo Jahansouz (Sarah Shahi) was born in 1980 and is an Iranian-American television actress. Shahi was born and grew up in Euless, Texas. She is the daughter of…
Ala Ebtekar
Ala Ebtekar was born in July 21, 1978. He is an American-based visual artist who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Ebtekar is known primarily…
Mark Changizi
Mark Changizi, Iranian-American theoretical neurobiologist, science writer, and author, was born in 1969 in New Jersey to an Iranian physician father and an American mother. Mark…
Ida Saki
Ida Saki is a dancer, dance teacher, Mind Body Dancer Yoga instructor, choreographer, and performer. She was born and raised in Dallas, where she graduated from Booker T.…
Sahar Nowrouzzadeh
Sahar Nowrouzzadeh is an Iranian-American foreign policy expert and was born in Connecticut in 1982 to Iranian parents. Her parents immigrated to the United States…
Bobak Ferdowsi
Bobak Ferdowsi was born on November 7, 1979 and is an Iranian-American systems engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He served on the Cassini–Huygens and Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity mission. Ferdowsi was born November…
Saba Valadkhan
Dr. Saba Valadkhan is an Iranian American biomedical scientist, and an Assistant Professor and RNA researcher at Case Western Reserve University. Saba Valadkhan was born in Tehran in 1974 to bright…
Jamal Yagoobi
Dr. Jamal Yagoobi received a BS in mechanical engineering from Sharif University of Technology in Iran and received his Ph.D. degree from the University of…
Farzaneh Milani
Farzaneh Milani is an Iranian-American scholar and author. She teaches Persian literature and Women’s Studies at the University of Virginia. Milani is Chair of the Department of Middle Eastern…
Abass Alavi
Abass Alavi is a physician-scientist specializing in the field of molecular imaging, most notably in the imaging modality of positron emission tomography (PET). Professor Alavi was born in Iran-Tabriz…
Tanaz Eshaghian
Tanaz Eshaghian was born on September 8, 1974 in Iran and is an Iranian-American documentary filmmaker. Tanaz Eshaghian left Iran with her mother at the age of…
Hamid Akhavan-Malayeri
Hamid Akhavan-Malayeri was born in 1961 in Tehran, Iran. Hamid is an Iranian-American business executive, and the CEO of Unify GmbH & Co. KG (formerly Siemens Enterprise Communications) since February 2010. Hamid Akhavan holds…
Bahar Soomekh
Bahar Soomekh was born in March 30, 1975 and is an Iranian-born American actress and environmental activist. Bahar was born in Tehran, Iran, to a devout Persian Jewish family. She…
Dara Khosrowshahi
Dara Khosrowshahi was born in Tehran in May 28, 1969 and is an Iranian-American businessman and the CEO of Expedia, Inc. Khosrowshahi received a B.S. in Bioelectrical Engineering from Brown University in 1991. Dara…
Roya Hakakian
Roya Hakakian was born in 1966 in Iran and is an Iranian-American poet, journalist and writer living in the United States. Born and raised in a Persian Jewish family in Tehran,…
Deep Dish
Deep Dish is a duo of DJs and house-music producers consisting of Iranian-American members Ali “Dubfire” Shirazinia and SharamTayebi. Based in Washington, D.C., Shirazinia and Tayebi are well known for providing house or dance remixes of tracks…
Farnaz Fassihi
Farnaz Fassihi was born in 1971 and is an award winning Iranian-American journalist. She is a senior staff writer for The Wall Street Journal covering…
Antonio Esfandiari
Antonio “The Magician” Esfandiari, was born as Amir Esfandiari in December 8, 1978 and is a professional Iranian-American poker player and former professional magician. Esfandiari was born in Tehran, Iran.…
Yara Shahidi
Yara Sayeh Shahidi who was born on February 10, 2000 is an Iranian-American actress. Shahidi was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to an American mother, Keri-Salter Shahidi, and an Iranian father,…
Ramin Najafi
Doctor Ramin Najafi is an Iranian-American chemist. Having emigrated from Iran to study in 1978, Ramin Najafi’s future plans were thrown into disarray by the 1979…
Doreen Granpeesheh
Doreen Granpeesheh was born in 1963 and is an Iranian-American clinical psychologist and a PHD holder. Doreen was born in Tehran, Iran and went to school in…
Nader Engheta
Nader Engheta was born in October 8, 1955 in Tehran and is an Iranian-American scientist. He is currently the H. Nedwill Ramsey Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, affiliated with the…
Shohreh Aghdashloo
Shohreh Aghdashloo was born in May 11, 1952 in Tehran, as Shohreh Vaziri-Tabar (“Aghdashloo” is the family name of her former husband, Iranian painter Aydin Aghdashloo) to a…
Baba Ali
Baba Ali was born Ali Ardekani in October 29, 1975 and is an Iranian-American comedian, games developer, businessman and actor. Although born into a Persian family, he was raised in a secular irreligious household in Los Angeles,…
Lily Afshar
Lily Afshar is an Iranian-American classical guitarist. Lily was born in Tehran. At ten years of age she first encountered the guitar and found out about her love…
Nima Arkani-Hamed
Nima Arkani-Hamed was born in April 5th 1972 and is an Iranian-American theoretical physicist with interests in high-energy physics. Arkani-Hamed is now on the faculty at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He…
Atoosa Rubenstein
Atoosa Rubenstein was born Atoosa Behnegar in Tehran, Iran in 1972 and is an Iranian-American entrepreneur and editor. She was the editor-in-chief of Seventeen magazine and also the founding editor of CosmoGIRL!…
Ali Javan
Ali Javan was born in December 26, 1926 and is an Iranian-American physicist and inventor at MIT. His main contributions to science have been in the fields of quantum physics and spectroscopy. He…
Nadia Bjorlin
Nadia Alexandra Bjorlin was born in August 2, 1980 in Newport, Rhode Island and is an Iranian-American actress, singer, musician and model. Her parents are the Swedish composer…
Nariman Farvardin
Nariman Farvardin is an Iranian-American engineer and president at Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey. Formerly Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost at the University of Maryland, College…
Porochista Khakpour
Porochista Khakpour was born in 1978 in Tehran and is an Iranian-American novelist, essayist and writer. Porochista was born in Tehran and was raised in South Pasadena, California and the Los…
Navid Negahban
Navid Negahban was born in June 2, 1968 in Mashhad, Iran and is an Iranian American actor. Negahban took a liking to theater when he was 8 years old while…
Shahrnush Parsipur
Shahrnush Parsipur was born on February 17, 1946 in Tehran and is an Iranian-American writer and novelist. She is the daughter of an attorney in the Iranian Justice…
Hamid Jafarkhani
Hamid Jafarkhani was born in 1966 in Tehran, and is an Iranian-American Chancellor’s Professor in electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California, Irvine’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering. His research focuses on communications theory,…
Mahnaz Afkhami
Mahnaz Afkhami was born in Kerman, Iran in 1941 and is the Iranian-American Founder and President of Women’s Learning Partnership (WLP). She is also the Executive Director of the Foundation for…
Vartan Gregorian
Vartan Gregorian was born on April 8, 1934 in Tabriz, Iran to a Christian Armenian family and is an Iranian-Armenian academic, currently serving as the president of Carnegie…
Soraya Darabi
Soraya Darabi received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History from Georgetown University. She is a renowned digital entrepreneur and pioneer in the social…
Mohsen Mostafavi
Mohsen Mostafavi was born in 1954 and is an Iranian-American architect and educator. He is the Dean and a Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He has been the Gale and Ira…
Christiane Amanpour
Christiane Amanpour is a television news anchor and foreign correspondent who has spent her career working for the American news network Cable Network News and…
Firouz Naderi
Dr. Naderi is the director for the Solar System Exploration Directorate at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Formerly, he was the associate director for Project Formulation…
Nasim Pedrad
Nasim Pedrad, Hollywood Actress who is on the cast of Saturday Night Live was born in Tehran, Iran. Pedrad and her parents lived in Tehran until 1984,…
Cumrun Vafa
Cumrun Vafa is an Iranian-American leading string theorist from Harvard University where he started as a Harvard Junior Fellow. He is a recipient of the…
Leila Vaziri
Leila Vaziri is an American swimmer, the 2007 world champion and a former world record holder in the 50 m backstroke. Vaziri completed her collegiate…
Jimmy Delshad
Jamshid “Jimmy” Delshad is an Iranian-American politician in the state of California. He became Mayor of Beverly Hills on March 21, 2007 and again on…
Goli Ameri
Goli Ameri is an Iranian-American diplomat, politician and businesswoman from the U.S. state of Oregon. She is the former Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Values…
Gholam Peyman
Gholam A. Peyman, MD recipient of National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the nation’s highest honor for technological achievement, bestowed by the President of the…
Cyrus Habib
Cyrus Habib is an attorney and politician from the U.S. state of Washington. In 2012, Habib, a Democrat, was elected to represent Washington’s 48th Legislative…
Rudi Bakhtiar
Rudi Bakhtiar (Rudabeh Bakhtiar) is the first Iranian American journalist to anchor a prime time news hour in the United States, called “CNN Headline News…
Pardis Sabeti
Pardis Sabeti is an Iranian-American computational biologist, medical geneticist and evolutionary geneticist, who developed a bioinformatic statistical method which identifies sections of the genome that…
Anousheh Ansari
Anousheh Ansari born September in Mashhad, Iran is an engineer and the Iranian-American co-founder and chairwoman of Prodea Systems. Her previous business accomplishments include serving…
Salar Kamangar
Salar Kamangar was born in tehran in 1977 and is a graduate of Stanford University. He is a senior executive at Google and the former CEO of…
Catherine Bell
Catherine Lisa Bell is an American actress known for her role in the television show JAG from 1997 to 2005. Currently she stars in the…
Pierre Omidyar
Pierre Morad Omidyar is a French-born Iranian American entrepreneur and philanthropist, who is the founder and chairman of the eBay auction site. Omidyar and his…
Mina Bissell
Mina J. Bissell, Ph.D., is an Iranian American biologist and a world-recognized leader in the area of the role of extracellular matrix (ECM) and microenvironment…
Cyrus Amir-Mokri
Cyrus Amir-Mokri is the Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions at the U.S. Treasury Department and has lived in the United States since 1981 since his…
Cyma Zarghami
Cyma Zarghami is an Iranian-American cable television executive currently serving as the president of Nickelodeon and MTV Networks’ Kids & Family Group. Zarghami was born…
Esfandiar Baharmast
Esfandiar Baharmast is a retired Iranian-American football (soccer) referee best known for supervising two matches during the 1998 FIFA World Cup held in France. At…
Nazanin Boniadi
Born in Tehran at the height of the Iranian Revolution, Ms. Boniadi’s parents relocated to London shortly thereafter. Later she moved to the United States…
Shahriar Sadigh Afshar
Shahriar Sadigh Afshar was born in 1971 and is an Iranian-American physicist and a multiple award-winning inventor. He is known for devising and carrying out the Afshar experiment at Harvard University in 2004.Since…
Haleh Esfandiari
Haleh Esfandiari who was born in 1940 in Iran is an Iranian American academic and the Director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow…
Nouriel Roubini
Nouriel Roubini is an American economist and was born in March 29, 1958 in Istanbul, Turkey, to Iranian Jewish parents. When he was an infant, his family lived briefly…
Davar Ardalan
Iran Davar Ardalan is the Senior Producer of NPR’s Tell Me More. She was born in San Francisco and has also lived and worked in…
Touraj Houshmandzadeh
Touraj Houshmandzadeh was born September 26, 1977 and is an Iranian/American (Houshmandzadeh is of mixed heritage: his mother is African-American and his father Persian) football wide receiver. He was…
Mahnaz Badihian
Mahnaz Badihian is an American-Iranian poet, who was born in Isfahan/Iran. She is most noted for her use of poetry to bridge the gap between…
Faryar Shirzad
Born in1965 to Iranian parents in London. Faryar has a Bachelor of Science degree in Finance from the University of Maryland; a Master of Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School…
Roxana Saberi
Roxana Saberi is an Iranian-American journalist[1] and former Miss North Dakota pageant winner. She was born in New Jersey/USA on April 26, 1977 from an Iranian father and a…
Atefeh Riazi
Atefeh Riazi, a United States national born in Iran, was appointed as Chief Information Technology Officer, Assistant Secretary-General, Office of Information and Communications Technology, Department…
Shahriar Kamali
Shahriar Kamali, known as King Kamali, is an Iranian-American bodybuilder and was born in March 29, 1972 in Tehran, Iran. He is a retired IFBB professional bodybuilder. Nicknamed, famous as “The…
Firoozeh Dumas
Firoozeh Dumas is an Iranian-American writer and was born in 1965 in Abadan, Iran. At the age of seven, Dumas and her family moved to Whittier, California. She later moved back…
Arash Ferdowsi
Arash Ferdowsi was born October 7, 1985 and is an Iranian-American entrepreneur. He is co-founder and chief technology officer of Dropbox. Arash graduated from high school in 2004 in Kansas. Ferdowsi attended Massachusetts…
Rostam Batmanglij
Rostam Batmanglij was born on November 28, 1983 to Iranian parents and is an Iranian-American songwriter, composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist of New York-based indie rock band Vampire Weekend and…
