The Iranian Gala @Harvard is a black-tie evening that honors leading community members in various fields. Founded by a group of Harvard students of Persian heritage, the Gala strives to bring together leading professionals, artists, and academics who have dedicated themselves to furthering the study, understanding, and appreciation of Iranian culture, history, and society. The vision of the Gala is to mobilize and empower the next generation of leaders in the Iranian community.
The Iranian Gala @Harvard is presented by Harvard Undergraduate Iranian Association (HUIA) in partnership with Harvard alumni, faculty, and affiliates.
The Iranian Gala @Harvard is presented by Harvard Undergraduate Iranian Association (HUIA) in partnership with Harvard alumni, faculty, and affiliates.
2017 Keynote
Christiane Amanpour
Chief International Correspondent, CNN; Host, AMANPOUR Christiane Amanpour is host of Amanpour and chief international correspondent for CNN. Previously, she was the global affairs anchor at ABC News. Her illustrious career in journalism spans three decades. Her international reporting began in 1990 as a correspondent for CNN where she reported on international crises in the Gulf War, Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, Palestinian territories, Iran, Sudan, Israel, Pakistan, Somalia, Rwanda, the Balkans, Egypt, and Libya. She has interviewed most of the top world leaders over the past two decades and Amanpour has received every major broadcast award, including an inaugural Television Academy Award, ten News and Documentary Emmys, four George Foster Peabody Awards, and nine honorary degrees. In 2014, she was inducted into the Cable Hall of Fame. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, an Honorary Citizen of Sarajevo and UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador. |
2017 Honorees
Soheila Gharib, MD
Chief Medical Officer, Harvard University Health Services Dr. Sohelya Gharib is the Chief Medical Officer at Harvard University Health Services (HUHS) . Dr. Gharib graduated with honors from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. She then moved to Boston where she completed her training in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and fellowships in Endocrinology and Metabolism at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Molecular Endocrinology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Gharib co-founded the Women’s Health Center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where she was the Medical Director until 2004, when she became the first woman Chief of Medicine at HUHS. Since 2013, she has been Chief Medical Officer, and a practicing physician, at HUHS where she oversees the clinical strategy and operations for the health services, which provides care to the Harvard community. Dr. Gharib has had long-standing interests in reproductive health, the care of women, and the provision of care to a diverse population of patients. Her current interests include bringing a rigorous metrics-driven approach to quality and safety of care, creating highly effective teams, ensuring that all patients receive culturally sensitive care, and that HUHS is a diverse, inclusive place to work. Dr. Gharib is on the Dean’s Visiting Committee for Case Western Reserve University and an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School, where she is a long-standing member of the Admissions Committee, and a member of the Divisions of General Medicine and Women’s Health at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. |
Mehran Kardar, PhD
Francis Friedman Professor of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Professor Mehran Kardar is the Francis Friedman Professor of Physics at MIT. Born in Tehran, he attended the Andisheh Don Bosco School for primary through high school. He then obtained his bachelors and masters degrees from Cambridge University in 1979 and 1983, and a PhD in Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1983. He was a Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows for three years, before joining the MIT faculty in 1986. Dr. Kardar is also a distinguished faculty member at the New England Complex Systems Institute. Dr. Kardar is best known for his namesake non-linear stochastic partial differential equation, the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equation. His specialty is Statistical Physics, having authored two of the most widely used textbooks in this area Statistical Physics of Particles and Statistical Physics of Fields, and conducted research on a variety of topics spanning soft-matter, biophysics, and fluctuation-induced phenomena. Professor Kardar is the recipient of a number of awards including the A.P. Sloan Fellowship, Presidential Young Investigator Award under President George H. W. Bush and the Guggenheim Fellowship. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. |
.David Roxburgh, PhD
Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Professor of Islamic Art History, Harvard University Chair of Department of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University David J. Roxburgh has studied at the Edinburgh University, as a Thouron Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, and finished his doctoral thesis as a fellow at the Smithsonian Institution and Center for Advanced Study in Visual Arts, National Gallery of Arts. Roxburgh started his teaching career at Harvard University in 1996 and was promoted to full professor with tenure in 2003. In 2007 he became Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Professor of Islamic Art History. His books include Prefacing the Image: The Writing of Art History in Sixteenth-Century Iran (Leiden, 2001) and The Persian Album, 1400-1600: From Dispersal to Collection (New Haven, 2005). He has also worked as a curator on the exhibitions Turks: A Journey of A Thousand Years (London, Royal Academy of Art, 2005) and Traces of the Calligrapher: Islamic Calligraphy in Practice, c. 1600-1900 (Houston, Museum of Fine Arts, 2007). He is currently working on books about the study of Medieval architecture in Iran through the archive of Myron Bement Smith, text and image in illustrated Arabic manuscripts of the 11th through 13th centuries, and the art and literature of Herat during the life of Timurid prince Baysunghur (d. 1433) (delivered as the Yarshater Lectures in SOAS, London). In Fall 2017, two publications edited by Roxburgh will appear in conjunction with an exhibition titled Technologies of the Image: Art in 19th-Century Iran. The first is a monograph, co-authored with graduate students, about an album of drawings in the Harvard Art Museums. The second is the exhibition catalogue, co-edited with Mary McWIlliams, with essays on lacquer, lithography, photography, and painting. 2017 Musical Performer
Shooka Afshar Sheez Ensemble Ms. Afshar is an active recitalist in Iranian, Classical and operatic repertoire. She sings Iranian tunes with a classical technique in venues such as Northeastern University , Harvard, UMass Lowell and The Iranian Association of Boston. Shooka started playing the flute at the age of six and during 15 years of playing the flute I have taken part in numerous solo performances, orchestral and chamber ensemble performances at Niavaran Concert Hall, Vahdat Concert Hall and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Iran, to name just a few. Since coming to Boston, she has appeared in roles in different opera scenes: Under the coaching of Daniel Wyneken and Janice Giampa at New England Conservatory she performed the roles of Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni and Electra in Idomeneo. And under the coaching of Vanessa Schukis at Longy School of Music, I appeared as the first lady in The Magic Flute, Mrs. Mc. Lean in Susannah, Edith in Pirates of Penzance, and as part of the chorus in Dido and Aeneas and Gondoliers. Shooka is currently a soloist at the Calliope ensemble and her first operatic debut was the role of the Princess in Dvorák’s "Šelma Sedlák" (The Cunning Peasant) opera in Feb 2014 at it's premier in the USA. |
