Iranian-Americans you Should Know: Pardis Sabeti

Iranians have been making significant contributions to business, science, culture and entertainment in the United States since the early 20th century. Today, there are almost one million people of Iranian origin living in the United States. In this series, IranWire profiles the Iranian-Americans you should know, highlighting their achievements and careers, and asking what it means to be part of one of America’s most educated and successful communities.

***

Pardis Sabeti is a geneticist and biologist whose work focuses on tracking the evolution of infectious diseases, and identifying treatments of them. 

Sabeti develops algorithms to help identify how humans and other species evolve and respond to some of the world’s most devastating diseases, including Ebola and malaria. 

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) listed Sabeti as the 49th most important scientific figure in the world.

She is an associate professor in biology and evolutionary biology at Harvard University and the Department of Immunology and Infectious Disease at the Harvard School of Public Health.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded her a $2 million budget to research the malaria genome and she has published more than 20 research papers in top scientific publications, including Science and Nature.

In 2015, TIME Magazine listed Sabeti as a Person of the Year for her contribution toward fighting Ebola, and listed her on its 100 Most Influential People list. 

Pardis Sabeti was born in 1975 in Tehran to Nancy and Parviz Sabeti, who was a high official in Savak, the shah’s secret police. Her family escaped Iran during the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and after a short stay in Israel, settled in Florida.

Before graduating from Harvard Medical School with perfect academic credentials, she received a bachelor of science in biology from MIT and a Ph.D in evolutionary genetics from the University of Oxford in 2002.

In 2012 she received the Smithsonian magazine's American Ingenuity Award in the Natural Sciences category and in 2015 she was the recipient of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator award.

Pardis Sabeti is also a senior associate member at the Broad Institute, a biomedical and genetic research institute associated with both Harvard and MIT.

Besides her scientific achievements, Sabeti sings and plays bass in the alternative rock band Thousand Days, which has released three albums.

“One of the reasons that I can do many things like be a musician, a scientist, and so on is because I came from such a different culture into a new culture,” she told the US TV network PBS in an interview. “And because my parents didn't know what American culture was, they just made it whatever they thought it was supposed to be — it became very fluid. There were no boundaries as to who we were and what we could do.”

Sabeti told PBS about her experience growing up in the US. 

“I speak Persian at home and I'm definitely very tied to my Iranian culture, but it's really a mix because I do feel very American,” she said. “I remember when my parents would take us to Disney World and how I really loved it there, especially at Circus World. On old family videos, you can hear me speaking in Persian and then saying ‘Circus World’ a lot.”

One of her colleagues, Eric Lander of the Broad Institute, which has ties to Harvard and MIT has described Sabeti as having “boundless optimism.” 

When the PBS interviewer asked if she had a role model, Sabeti answered, “I've never liked the term ‘role model.’ I'm just me, and there are plenty of things I would change about myself because I'm definitely not perfect. I do hope people see me as who I am: an Iranian-American, a woman, a scientist, a teacher, and so on. But I don't think people should want to be like me. Something more exciting to me would be if I could help other people become who they are inside and achieve their own goals. I hope that if I'm inspirational, it's in that way.”

In an interview with a website focusing on diaspora communities, she said: “I was born in Tehran, Iran. I’m very proud of my Iranian heritage,” she said in another interview. “I think most Americans don’t really have a sense of who Iranians are. They see a lot of what’s going on by the regime and the people in power and they reflect it to us, but we’re very different from that. You see Iranians in America and how creative they are and how excited they are and how much they get involved in their communities, and I think it’s a wonderful thing.”