Dr. Alireza Bazargan was born in Tehran in 1985, and moved to Canada alongside his family at a young age. After spending most of his childhood and adolescence in Toronto and Vancouver, he returned to Iran and soon after participated in the highly competitive nationwide university entrance exam. By being ranked in the top 1% among hundreds of thousands of participants, Dr. Bazargan was able to gain admission into the Chemical Engineering Department of Sharif University of Technology, one of the Middle East’s most prestigious universities.
Near the end of his BSc studies, Dr. Bazargan was awarded a scholarship by IAESTE/DAAD to carry out a research internship at Technische Universität Kaiserslautern in Germany, where he worked on the synthesis of hydrogels for water treatment applications. Subsequently for his Masters, Dr. Bazargan was the recipient of the esteemed TOTAL scholarship allowing him to enroll at École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Nantes (now IMT Atlantique) which is one of France’s elite grande écoles. During his MSc, Dr. Bazargan completed every single one of his credits with honors in the Project Management for Environmental and Energy Engineering program (PM3E).
In order to complete his MSc thesis, Dr. Bazargan received a scholarship to travel to the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (ranked 2nd in the world’s top 50 universities under 50 by QS). His work in Hong Kong was focused on process design for resource recovery from electronic wastes. Thereafter, he turned down a PhD offer from Oxford University and accepted a full scholarship from HKUST instead, in order to continue his research under the supervision of one of the world’s most cited Chemical Engineering professors, Gordon McKay. Dr. Bazargan’s PhD research was focused on deriving valuable products form carbonaceous and siliceous solid wastes, which also led to the synthesis of materials for oil spill recovery.
As part of his doctorate, Dr. Bazargan received an additional scholarship to carry out a chapter of his work at the University of Cambridge, UK. At Cambridge, Dr. Bazargan was a member of the Paste, Particle and Polymer Processing group (P4G) in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, where he focused on the production of briquettes from biochars for green energy purposes, as well as the formation of ion exchange resin pellets for heavy metal removal from polluted waters. Dr. Bazargan received his PhD in January 2015.
Currently, Dr. Bazargan is a faculty member at the School of Environment, University of Tehran, where since 2019 he has been the head of the Waste Management Research Cluster. Also in 2019, he successfully founded the Resource Efficiency Laboratory in the College of Engineering which he currently directs. Dr. Bazargan’s research is generally focused on Environmental Engineering, and more specifically, on resource recovery from wastes, and water and wastewater treatment. The courses that Dr. Bazargan has taught to date include: Waste Processing Unit operations, Integrated Waste Management, Landfill Leachate Treatment, Renewable Energy, Fundamentals of Sustainable Development, Environmental Statistics, Environmental Economics, Water and Wastewater Treatment, Advanced Wastewater Reuse, and HSE.
In 2019, Dr. Bazargan co-founded Pyramoon Water and Energy Engineering Company, which strives for the development of novel environmental technologies. The company’s accomplishments in the span of just a few years since its inception include the construction of the Bushehr (phase II) and Borazjan desalination plants (cumulative capacity of over 20 million liters per day), and the design and development of numerous products such as dissolved air flotation units with embedded filtration, novel vortex separation units for grit removal, and 3D-printed static mixers to name a few.
Throughout his career, Dr. Bazargan has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors including awards for best presentation, best paper, top instructor and a gold medal among numerous others. In 2015, Dr. Bazargan was inducted into Iran’s National Elites Foundation. In the same year, he won the International Young Waste Researcher Award from the ICSW. In 2017, he was a recipient of the Kazemi Ashtiani prize, and in 2018, his first edited book “A Multidisciplinary Introduction to Desalination” became a #1 New Release Best Seller on Amazon.com. Since 2020, Dr. Bazargan has been awarded a highly coveted National Consultancy role at the United Nations Development Program, whereby he provides the UN offices in Iran with expert opinion on relevant matters.
During the years, Dr. Bazargan has provided professional services to numerous companies and organizations including the Golrang Industrial Group, Hard Tech Startup Accelerator, Noor Vijeh Company, The Science and Technology Vice Presidency of the Government of Iran, The Nanotechnology Initiative Council of Iran, and Peako STEP Ltd. as its exclusive representative in Iran for Biomass Gasification units. Dr. Bazargan is a native speaker of English and Farsi, has a working proficiency in French, and a basic understanding of Mandarin Chinese and Arabic. Naturally, his colorful past and experiences have made him uniquely suited for collaborations with multinational companies and international organizations alike.