Fariborz Farhan is a Computer/Electrical Engineer with 33 years of experience in technology development, innovation, engineering and management.

He received his BSEE (1980, high honor) and Masters of Electrical Engineering (1982) with a concentration in signal processing and telecommunications from Georgia Institute of Technology. He continued his academic path through the doctoral program at Tech till 1985 when he joined the industry. In 1991 he became a registered Professional Engineer. He has authored and presented several technical papers in various industry forums and conferences.

He has led many successful product development projects and groups in the area of communications, hardware, systems, software, integrated circuit, operations systems and mobile health. He has led start-ups to multi-million dollar revenue levels and holds 22 US Patents.

He is one of the original founders of POOIA and also served as leader of Society of Iranian Engineers of Atlanta (SIEA) in the 1990’s.

Outside of work, he is a sports enthusiast and a soccer player.

Mohsen Mostajabi is a Mechanical Engineer with 40 years of experience in Engineering. He received his Bachelor of Science degree from Queen Mary College, London University. Afterwards he then returned to Iran and worked as an air-conditioning design Engineer. He also worked in Kuwait prior to leaving for USA to continue his studies in Mechanical engineering. After completing his Master degree, he attended Georgia Tech for two years to study Mechanical Engineering at the PhD level.

Mohsen is a registered professional engineer in several states, and a member of American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-conditioning engineers.

He has been working as a Consulting engineer in the USA for the past 36 years, the last 24 years of which he has had his own company, namely, MEP Design Engineers. MEP Design Engineers provides Mechanical, Electrical, and plumbing engineering for commercial buildings.

Outside of work, he is an avid reader, enjoys poetry, traditional Persian music, and traveling.

He is one of the original founders of POOIA since 2011.

Dr. Keivan Zandi completed his Ph.D in Medical Virology from Tarbiat Modarres University in Iran. He is currently working as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Pediatrics, School of Medicine, Emory University. His research mainly focuses on Antiviral Drug Discovery for Emerging and Re-emerging viral infections. Previously, he was a Visiting Professor at the University of Malaya in Malaysia where he served in that institute as an associate professor of virology for 6 years, following 8 years of service at Bushehr University of Medical Sciences in Iran, as a faculty member. During the time of his service at Bushehr University of Medical Sciences, he also was appointed as the head of the Sub-National Influenza Surveillance Laboratory. He also worked at the WHO Collaborative Center for Hemorrhagic Fevers in South East Asia in Kuala Lumpur as the head of the Antiviral Research Laboratory. To date, he has published more than 80 research articles in various scientific journals and possess several patents. He is actively serving as an Editorial Board Member for Scientific Reports with Nature Publishing Group as well as several other journals such as PLoS One, BMC Infectious Diseases, Microorganisms, International Journal of Virology, SM tropical Medicine Journal, International Journal of Pharmacology, American journal of Drug Discovery and development, International Journal of Drug Discovery and Biotechnology journal.

Behzad Azadi has a Masters in Electrical Engineering and an MBA in international marketing. He has taught as an adjunct professor in New York and Tehran. He is currently Chairman of POOIA’s Board of Trustees and hopes to contribute to the cause transforming POOIA with vision, strategy, leadership, and project management skills.

He has spent most of his career in software development and software management in telecommunications working for AT&T Bell Laboratories, Tellabs, and Cox Communications. He currently works for Merkle in the field of Big Data, artificial intelligence, and digital marketing. This is the same area that companies such as Facebook, Google, and Amazon play and compete in. As an example, a current client of Merkle is Verizon, and the project involves helping to identify millions of customers eligible for the company’s various promotions. As another example, he was part of a team that solved the “churn” problem (the constant bleeding of the customer base) for the GM Onstar program.

Behzad’s interests include soccer, tennis, cosmology, Persian literature, and writing Persian poetry. He also dabbles in public speaking and non-fictional writing. One of his current technical passions is the self-initiated project of mathematical modeling one of the popular casino games. It combines seemingly disparate disciplines such as probabilities, graph theory, and game theory to solve a never-before-solved or even attempted puzzle. The solution can have applications in a broad range of industries and potentially far reaching consequences in fields where decision making is at the core.