Ehssan Nazockdast
Associate Director of Explanatory Modeling
Ehssan Nazockdast, PhD, is the Associate Director of Explanatory Modeling at the Allen Institute for Cell science, where he leads multidisciplinary teams developing mechanistic, interpretable models grounded in multiscale soft materials modeling and biological fluid dynamics. His work focuses on creating predictive, physics-based frameworks that explain the organization, mechanics, and transport processes of living materials across molecular, cellular, and tissue scales.
Prior to joining the Allen Institute, Nazockdast was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Physical Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His academic research produced new computational platforms for simulating flows and transport in cytoskeletal assemblies and membrane-bound protein filaments, all done in close collaborations with experimental groups. He has also been recognized with competitive awards, including an NSF CAREER Award.
Prior to this, Ehssan was a postdoctoral student with Michael Shelley at Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences (NYU) and Flatiron Institute (Simons Foundation), where he developed computational tools for simulating fluid-structure interactions in cytoskeletal assemblies and applied those tools and biophysical modeling to study the positioning of mitotic spindle during cell division, in close collaboration with Needleman Lab (Harvard). Ehssan earned his PhD in Chemical Engineering from the City University of New York, conducting research at the Levich Institute on nonequilibrium statistical mechanics and rheology of colloidal suspensions. He holds MS and BS degrees in Polymer Engineering from Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran, Iran).
