As a child in Iran, Farimah Farahmandi, now Ph.D., knew she wanted a math-heavy career.
Every night, she would lie in bed and think about doing research and crunching numbers in technologically advanced countries like Japan or the United States.
But what would that look like? Engineering, sure, but what kind? At age 17, she was considering industrial engineering when her father invited her for a stroll.
“He took me to the mountain near my town for a long walk, and I had nowhere to escape,” she recalled with a smile. “He talked about how the world was changing and how computing would transform everything. He said that soon everything would rely on computers: banking systems, appliances, cars. He told me computer engineering would be at the center of that transformation.”
He convinced her to choose computer engineering, and the rest is history. She traces her passion for hardware engineering to a third-semester class at the University of Tehran, where she first discovered digital circuits.
Farahmandi is now living her dream as a celebrated faculty member and researcher in UF’s Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE). She is now the Walden C. Rhines Endowed Professor for Hardware Security and associate director of the Florida Institute for Cybersecurity.
An author of eight books, Farahmandi has won the IEEE/ACM Design Automation Conference (DAC) Under-40 Innovator Award, Best Assistant Professor Award at UF, the Pramod Khargonekar Excellence Award, ECE’s Excellence in Research Award, Semiconductor Research Corp Young Faculty Award, a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, 11 best-paper nominations and an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award — all before she was 40.
Which brings us to her latest award (or, rather, one of her latest awards): UF’s 40 Under 40 alumni award. In April, Farahmandi will also receive the Distinguished Young Alumni Award from UF’s Department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE).