POOIA Gala and Award Ceremony of 2023
Please enjoy these photos from our annual Student Scholarship Ceremony! We came together on an incredible evening to celebrate and honor our award recipients. This remarkable evening was one to remember, filled with amazing food, long time friends, and new memories. See you next year!
Dr Hamid Arabnia's Report, The Award Ceremony, January 28, 2023
I would like to say a few words about POOIA’s achievements in regards to students’ activities. Here I mention a very small subset of achievements.
Since I joined POOIA over a decade ago, I have witnessed the following tangible impacts and actions:
POOIA facilitated the admission of 12 Iranian students to universities in Georgia with full funding (as Teaching Assistants and/or Research Assistants) – We got to know about some of the challenges of these students through their relatives who happened to meet us at POOIA events.
I should add that Universities in GA do admit tens of students every year through their normal process. But these 12 students had some challenging issues with their educational background.
We have setup a protocol that is now followed by many universities in Georgia for evaluation of students who earn their degrees from Iran (including degrees obtained via underground institutions). Through this, we have had FOUR students admitted (who, otherwise would not have been admitted to any institution in USA). Two of them now work at facebook.
We have provided over 408 letters to support the Green Card applications of a large number of Iranian students via NIW (National Interest Waiver). Each of these letters is 4 to 8 pages long, ... For each application, we had to also find 6 other letter writers. For a few of them, we had to discuss their cases with the immigration officers, ... The POOIA scholarships also help students to justifiably beef-up their qualifications for Green Card.
Dental Issues: POOIA facilitated urgent dental work for 18 students (past 10 years). Some of these dental procedures were quite expensive. POOIA did not cover the cost of any – our Iranian dentists in Georgia and North Carolina offered their services at cost or free.
In recent years, four Iranian students in Georgia were accused of plagiarism. TWO of the four were indeed guilty of this act. We arranged a measured and fair penalty for the two guilty students (arranged for them to participate in ethics workshop, ...). The other two students were NOT guilty. One of these two individuals, a very young Iranian girl, was escorted by a university security police officer out of campus with a restraining order not to be on campus for a year! She had only 6 weeks left on her I20/Visa and so she was about to return to Iran. We investigated the professor who initiated all this and found that the same professor has had questionable history with other students who happened to be of Moslem faith. This matter was resolved. The student earned her PhD and moved to Stanford as PostDoc and now she works at a large pharmaceutical company – she married one of our other PhD students and they now have two children.
A student had to go through mammography procedure once every 6 months due ... She had no funds to do this (as well as no health insurance). We sought help from our MDs – they arranged the mammography procedure at no cost to her.
Five students with cash-flow problems – not being able to pay their tuitions & rent; They were all helped.
POOIA’s donations to GATech Farsi program – significant donations – still ongoing.
Internship programs (through Iranian CEO’s ...). Examples: Khanomeh Taraneh Khoie (at the time at NCR) recruited 18+ working as interns with good pay at NCR.
Dr. Sharokh Bagheri & Dr. Hussain Khan: supported multiple PhD students with funding as intern/part-timers ($2K a month during Academic months and $4K a month during Summer months).
Mr. Massoud Alibakhsh (CEO of Xeba Technologies) provided funding to multiple PhD students. He also provided Summer internship to many tens of UGA & GATech undergraduate students.
There are too many examples to voice out here – I just mentioned a very small subset of help from our POOIA supporters.
I will mention a very short/partial list of past recipients of POOIA Scholarship and what they are doing now:
Dr. Mohammad Mohebi (faculty at Appalachian State U).
Dr. Babak Rahbarinia ( Meta Corp – facebook)
Dr. Mehdi Allahyari ( Principal Research Scientist at Workhuman)
Dr. Delaram Yazdansepas ( faculty at Loyola Marymount University, California)
Dr. Navid Hashemi ( faculty at College of Charleston)
Dr. Soheyla Amirian (faculty at UGA)
Dr. Sahar Voghoei (Scientific Computing Professional at Institute of Government at UGA)
Dr. Farid Gharehmohammadi (Mayo Clinic in Florida)
Dr. Farzan ShenavarMasouleh (MediaLab in Georgia)
Dr. Mehdi Assefi (PNC Financial Services)
Dr. Mohammadreza Iman (Capgemini as AI Architect)
Dr. Abolfazl Farahani (LexisNexis)
Mr. Saeid Safaei (Walmart Global Tech, Texas)
Dr. Shima Dastgheib (Genentech as Data scientist in San Francisco).
Dr. Hamed Yaghoobian (faculty at Muhlenberg College, Pennsylvania)
Dr. Omid Setayeshfar (Meta Corp, Facebook)
Dr. Mojtaba Fazli (Harvard University, Research Fellow)
Dr. Milad Makkie (Manager at Honeywell)
Dr. Saber Soleymani (Visiting Faculty at GSU)
Mr. Ehsan Asali (PhD student at UGA – close to finishing)
Once again, I emphasise that the list of names that I mentioned is a very partial one. I mentioned ONLY those POOIA Award winners whose employments could be traced.
With your support, we can do better. Please, if you can, donate to POOIA. Your donations would probably be the best investment you can have in your Iranian community.
A few specific words about the scholarship:
The POOIA Student scholarship recognizes students who exhibit intellectual curiosity and creativity. Candidates are also expected to have a sustained record of academic excellence. This year, the selection criteria included academic merit, intellectual curiosity, and creativity. Applicants were asked to compose an essay about Iranian/Persian culture and/or art.
Any circumstances that demonstrated strength of character and potential for great achievement were also considered (examples included: professional excellence, community outreach and service, initiative and leadership potential).
This year’s winners are:
Winners (7):
Ms. Armita Ghobadi
Student: PhD (3rd year) in Developmental Psychology, Georgia State University
Publications: 5 research publications
Awards: None but lots of good outreach activities, including: President Persian Student Association (GSU) + Meals on Wheels + charity organizations
Statement: Essay about Iranian culture
Ms. Ariana Daftarian
Student: Doctor of Osteopathy, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine (PCOM), Georgia
Publications: 2 research publications
Awards: Multiple GATech Awards + GATech's President's Scholarship and more
Statement: Iranian Culture with some emphasis about language
Ms. Elika Bozorgi
Student: PhD (4th year), Computer Science, UGA
Publications: 1 research publication (her prof. is very stringent)
Awards: Ranked 12th in Azad University Entrance exam (out of 500,000)
Statement: Essay about Persian Festivals (very interesting)
Mr. Navid Nasajpour
Student: PhD, Material Science Engineering, GATech.
Publications: 15 research publications
Awards: multiple (from GATech + Kennesaw State + ...)
Statement: Arts of Esfahan and Iran (very short but ok)
Mr. Hamid Reza Rafieian Naeini
Student: PhD, Poultry Science, UGA
Publications: 6 research publications
Awards: Ranked top 7th Iranian National University Entrance MS Exam + and others from Iran in Animal Science
Statement: Comes from a family of truck drivers in Iran + essay about art and Naein (very good and interesting) + some English writing issues but has been in USA for a few months only.
Ms. Donna Bagheri
Ms. Tara Bagheri
Runner Ups: (3)
Ms. Behnoosh Abbasnezhad
Student: PhD (4th year), Integrative Conservation (Forestry Resources); UGA
Publications: 3 research publications + 2 in the pipeline
Awards: multiple (from UGA + Best Corporate Social Responsibilities + Women Empowerment, ...)
Statement: Cultural differences between a Persian and an Iranian (very good and informative)
Ms. Fatemeh Sadat Mahdavi
Student: PhD (Fall 2022), Poultry Science, UGA
Publications: 13 research publications
Awards: an award certificate from University of Tehran
Statement: Iran culture: a couple of paragraphs about Iranian music (barely ok)
Ms. Salimeh Majidi
Student: PhD (2nd year), Biomedical Sciences, Georgia State University
Publications: none
Awards: Society of Iranian American Women for Education Endowed Scholarship, ...
Statement: Essay about Yalda (short but ok)