Concordia Journal Home > Archives > June 12, 2008 issue >

Iranian student attracted by program 

By Dawn Wiseman

While most people look at doctoral work as a means of developing a high degree of expertise in a specific area, Amin Mannani (Electrical and Computer Engineering) used the opportunity to broaden his horizons.

“The reality of contemporary science and engineering is multi- and inter-disciplinary,” he explained. “You therefore need enough background in a variety of areas to be able to speak with some authority about them.”

To develop this skill level, Mannani took twice the number of courses required for graduation. According to his supervisor, Peyman Gohari, he succeeded at the highest level.

“If you take courses wisely, you can benefit from different points of view on the same problem,” he said.

With research focused on development of robust automatic protocols to govern communications within and between systems, Mannani combined courses in topics such as game theory and control theory to build a broad background in “practical problems that I may face in the future.”

He came to Concordia from Iran precisely because the university offered the type of breadth he was looking for in a doctoral program, “Concordia is one of the few universities to offer a PhD in systems and controls with a wide variety of courses.”

It was also one of the places where both he and his wife found supervisors. “She is also an electrical engineer, but in a different area,” he said with a smile.

He added that while they both found an intellectual home at Concordia, they occasionally needed support with other aspects of moving their lives half way around the world.

“We really appreciated all the help we received from the International Students Office when we arrived in the city. They were always there, very patient and very kind.”

As graduation approaches, Mannani’s future is firmly focused on more research.
“I want to be pushed to use my mind, and my first priority will be more research at the post-doctoral level,” he said. Here again, he isn’t planning to dive head first into one narrow field, but rather to expand his understanding of complementary fields in order to gain insight into own.

“It’s just the nature of contemporary science and engineering,” he said.