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Features

50 Iranian-Americans You Should Know: Shideh Dashti

February 16, 2017
Roland Elliott Brown
3 min read
Shideh Dashti with her research team
Shideh Dashti with her research team
Shideh Dashti pluviating dry sand into a container used for the study of soil mechanics
Shideh Dashti pluviating dry sand into a container used for the study of soil mechanics
Shideh Dashti
Shideh Dashti

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.

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Shideh Dashti is an assistant professor of geotechnical engineering and geomechanics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she works on building societies’ resistance to earthquakes and other natural disasters.

Geotechnical engineering is the branch of civil engineering dedicated to ensuring the stability of structures supported by soil or rock—in other words, just about everything human beings build.

Geomechanics is the study of the behavior of soil and rock.

Dashti grew up in Tehran and left Iran for the US in 1999, aged 17. She and her mother moved first to Chicago, before Dashti pursued her undergraduate education in civil engineering at Cornell University in Ithica, New York.

Upon graduation, Dashti worked for the geotechnical groups ARUP and Bechtel, where she took part in engineering projects related to the design of foundation systems, slopes and underground structures.

In 2009, Dashti completed her PhD in geotechnical engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, where she worked on shallow-founded structures on liquefiable soil deposits—the kind of earth commonly associated with the failure of structures during large earthquakes.

Coming from Iran, one of the most seismically active countries on earth, made earthquakes an obvious area of study. “I chose earthquake engineering when I was choosing a specialty for graduate school because of the Bam earthquake in Iran in 2003,” Dashti told IranWire.

The violent earthquake in the southeastern city of Bam on December 26 that year killed over 40,000 people and destroyed much of the ancient city’s historic center, including Arg-e Bam citadel, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

“I was wrapping up my undergraduate studies at the time the earthquake occurred,” Dashti says. “I personally never experienced an earthquake in Iran or other places, but I was very much affected by the images of the damage.”

Dashti encourages her students to take an international outlook. “One of my primary goals,” she writes on her research team’s website, “is to help train engineers that are more globally-engaged in research and practice, through engaging them in internationally relevant projects and collaborating with experts in other countries.”

Many of her students are from international backgrounds themselves.

 

Following US President Donald Trump’s January 27, 2017, executive order banning travel to the US from Iran and six other Muslim-majority countries for 90 days, Dashti told the Daily Camera newspaper,

 

When I became an American citizen by choice, I swore to protect this country with my life and I believe that today with all my heart [...] The United States is my country and I feel loyalty that I have never felt toward any other place. I have some of my best Ph.D. [students] and [post-doctoral researchers] from the seven banned countries who feel exactly the same way. I am heartbroken.

 

“I do feel a heavy weight since the 2016 elections,” Dashti told IranWire. “I feel the majority of us feel unfairly targeted and unsafe. I wish there was more information out there about the accomplishments and contributions of our community. On the positive side, I feel our community is coming together and uniting more than before and is becoming slightly more active in the public scene.”

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