Nariman Farvardin


Nariman Farvardin is an Iranian-American engineer and educator, currently serving as president of Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey. Formerly senior vice president for academic affairs, provost and acting president at the University of Maryland, College Park, he took office at Stevens on July 1, 2011.

Education and early career

Farvardin was born in Tehran, Iran. He holds bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In 1984, one year after earning his doctorate, he joined the faculty of the University of Maryland's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. In 1994, he became chair of the department, holding that position for six years before being appointed dean of the Clark School of Engineering.
In late 2010, he became acting president at University of Maryland, succeeding Dan Mote and held the post until November 1, 2010, when Wallace Loh became president of the University of Maryland. Formerly the dean of the A. James Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland, he succeeded William Destler as provost in May 2007.
In addition, he was made a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, holds seven U.S. patents and has co-authored more than 150 technical papers in industry journals and conference proceedings. His major research interests include information theory, signal compression, and applications of signal compression to speech, image, and video coding for wireless communication networks.
He co-founded a start-up company, Zagros Networks, which developed computer chips for networks. The company shared the same name as a mountain range in Iran where Farvardin was born. He has been honored with the National Science Foundation's Presidential Young Investigator Award, the George Corcoran Award for Outstanding Contributions to Electrical Engineering Education, and the Invention of the Year Award from the University of Maryland. He has cited Claude Shannon as his foremost historical influence.