How can a love for animals lead to a career in water research? For Bardia Heidari, Ph.D., who grew up with dogs, rabbits, turtles and parrots in Tehran, Iran, animals inspired questions about how they interacted with their environment.
Now a research scientist for the Texas Water Resources Institute at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research Center in Dallas, Heidari uses inspiration from his childhood to find solutions to water-related issues.
“My love for science started from a very early age in my childhood,” Heidari said. “I loved animals, watching them in their habitat and that was something I always had in mind, ‘how can we sustain this population of wildlife and the ecosystem?’”
As he grew up and learned more about conserving ecosystems and landscapes, Heidari eventually combined that with his skills in high school math and physics, leading to him studying civil engineering at the Sharif University of Technology.
“During the fourth year of college, all civil undergrads have to make a decision on which branch of civil engineering they want to pursue,” Heidari explained. “At that time, I was more interested in environmental engineering and that’s what I pursued.”
Early-career research leads to new opportunities
This led to Heidari applying to graduate programs across the world and soon moving abroad, ending up at Virginia Tech to earn a master’s in civil and environmental engineering.
“I was on a research project that was about air quality monitoring from construction activities which led to my master’s thesis,” he said. “I was not that interested in air quality as a long-term career though; I wanted to go into water-related research.”
Heidari had envisioned getting a Ph.D. since high school, and after graduating from Virginia Tech he brought that vision to life, beginning doctoral studies in civil and environmental engineering at the University of Illinois.
It was there that Heidari got involved in green infrastructure and urban water, mainly through a National Science Foundation-funded project.
“I wanted to get involved in a project that seemed most promising and interesting to me,” he said. “That idea was a multi-institutional and interdisciplinary collaborative study to allow the adoption of green infrastructure at a larger scale across different landscapes and watersheds.”
Texas move leads to urban water solutions
After completing his Ph.D., Heidari began working at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center in Dallas as a postdoctoral researcher. His research mainly focused on green infrastructure and its impact on water quantity, i.e. localized flooding, in urban environments.
“We conducted a study in the city of Dallas, in which we wanted to identify and assess the level of mitigation stormwater inlet flooding with the use of green infrastructure,” Heidari said.
Two years later, he joined TWRI in his current role as a research scientist, studying green infrastructure, urban stormwater and flooding, and localized flooding assessments. His research also analyzes climate change impacts, including precipitation extremes and making watersheds and cities more climate-resilient.
“Most people expect civil engineers to design structures, but that’s not what I generally do,” Heidari said. “What I generally do is more on the management side of natural systems and water systems, mostly using data and computational models to see how we can preserve and enhance these water systems going forward.”
When asked for advice for early-career students and scientists, he suggested being open to the different paths that one’s career can take, while also recognizing where your passion and goals come from.
“Be open to new ideas, have a general understanding of what your priorities are, what your goals are, but in terms of steps and even plans, be more open, more organic in the sense that across a longer career, you’ll realize there are many different paths you can take,” Heidari said. “Some of them are exciting and promising. Keep a growth mindset.”
