Congratulations to Mahan Ghafari on defending his Master’s thesis! Mahan will be starting his DPhil in Interdisciplinary Bioscience at Oxford in the fall.

This is a bittersweet moment for the group. It’s fantastic to see Mahan’s success, and he’s the first student from the group to earn a graduate degree. And obviously he’s going to a great program. But the decision to move to the UK was not entirely ours. Unfortunately, the US government made his situation in this country as Iranian citizen untenable. In fact, he’s been working remotely from the UK for the past year (spearheading a collaboration with Chris Illingworth at Cambridge—thank you Chris for hosting!) and had to defend his thesis remotely. Let’s keep fighting for a world where everyone can live, travel, and learn in freedom.