Nikta Fakhri
I grew up in Tehran, Iran. After completing my undergraduate studies at Sharif University of Technology, I came to Rice University as a graduate student.
Srini Devadas
I grew up in various cities in India and arrived at the University of California, Berkeley for graduate school in 1985, weeks after turning 21.
Stefanie Mueller
One of the great things about working in a research environment is that you are surrounded by so many people from different countries.
Azra Aksamija
I come from Sarajevo, Bosnia, a place historically known as the Jerusalem of Europe.
Ahmed Ghoniem
I grew up in Egypt. After finishing my bachelor's and master’s degrees at Cairo University, I joined the University of California, Berkeley to do my PhD.
Nuh Gedik
I am originally from Turkey. My lab uses ultrafast laser pulses to understand newly discovered materials such as high temperature superconductors.
Mehran Kardar
I was born in Tehran, Iran and attended the same school for twelve years. Following undergraduate studies at Cambridge University (UK), I moved to Cambridge (US) for graduate studies at MIT in 1979.
Fadel Adib
I was born in Tripoli, Lebanon in 1989 — the same year the civil war ended. I grew up listening to stories of how my parents narrowly escaped the horrors of a sectarian civil war. My parents enrolled us in a secular school, and I didn’t know who among my best friends were Christians or Muslims until I was in middle school. It didn’t really matter to us.
Munther Dahleh
I was born in a small town in the West Bank in Palestine called Tulkarem. However, I grew up in Amman, Jordan. I came to America when I was 17 years old. I spent 7 years in Texas where I got my BS and PhD. I then came to MIT as an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and I have been here since then. I met my wife, Jinane, at MIT, and we raised our three kids (Deema, Hilal, and Yazeed) while we were housemasters at MacGregor house. After living in Cambridge for 30 years, I can confidently say that this is our home.
Dina Katabi
I grew up in Damascus, Syria, and came to the US to do my PhD. My years as a graduate student at MIT were amazing, with many long nights of heated discussions, coding and searching for intractable bugs, and arguing about social and political issues while solving math problem sets. My best friends were also my office mates. We worked, took classes, and traveled together. By the end of my PhD, I was so attached to MIT, it was hard to leave. I took a faculty job and stayed.
Nir Shavit
America is now my home, but unlike many people who “immigrate” and then go through the process of building a life in their new country, I gradually built a life to the point where I can now say that I have indeed “immigrated.”