Bamdad Hosseini, MSc (’13), PhD ('17)

After finishing his BSc in mechanical engineering, Bamdad Hosseini decided to switch gears. He completed his MSc in the SFU Mathematics Department and recently defended his PhD. “I figured that engineering was not really the right thing for me. I liked numerical analysis and SFU has a strong group in that area,” he says. “I did my masters for two years and started my PhD afterwards.”

Hosseini’s Master’s thesis involved modelling the dispersion of pollutants in the atmosphere. “I created a numerical method for solving the equations that determined the dispersion of pollutants, and I also developed a model for dispersion of pollutants. It was heavier on the applications side,” he says.

For his PhD, he changed direction, but still works on atmospheric dispersion. “My supervisors, Profs. John Stockie and Nilima Nigam, gave me a lot of freedom to define my project and pick the problems that interest me at the intersection of statistics, probability and applied math,” he says.

For his recent work with Dr. Nilima Nigam, Hosseini won the prestigious SIAM Student Paper Prize. “It’s awarded to three students every year. This year I was among the winners for a paper I co-authored with my supervisor. It’s published in the SIAM/ASA journal on Uncertainty Quantification,” he says.

Hosseini plans to stay in academia. “My next step is a postdoctoral fellowship at the California Institute of Technology. After that, I hope to get an academic position in a respected university,” he says.

Hosseini was also one of two SFU recipients of the Governor Generals Gold Medal Convocation Award in 2017.