Pardis Sabeti Amazes the Scientific World
The London Daily Telegraph recently called her one of the “top 100 living geniuses” (she tied for 49th place with Henry Kissinger, Richard Branson, Stevie Wonder, and Meryl Streep), and CNN named her one of eight “geniuses who will change your life.” She is a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University, recipient of L’Oreal women in Science award, and summa cum laude honors at Harvard Medical School.
Pardis Sabeti was born in Tehran, Iran, and grew up in Orlando, Florida. She traces her academic success to her early life in her close-knit clan. She burst on the scientific scene in 2002 with a novel test for natural selection in the human genome and her current research is on the evolution of resistance to malaria and Lassa fever.
Far from a geeky scientist, she is also the lead singer in the Boston-based alternative group Thousand Days and has released three albums. Sabeti’s singing voice is “sweet and sexy,” wrote one music reviewer, adding wryly that “it’s nice to know she has a successful back-up career in case her attempts at winning the Nobel Prize don’t pan out.”
For the complete article see Science Magazine's April 2008 Issue.
You can also see our earlier report on another outstanding Iranian-American Scientist who has proposed the first extension of our notions of space-time since Albert Einstein.