Curriculum Vitae
Prof. Shirin Faraji (born in 1981 in Iran) is a theoretical chemist with a career that spans multiple countries and prestigious institutions. She earned her Master's degree in Chemistry in Tehran (2005) and went on to complete her PhD in 2010 at Heidelberg University, focusing on “Theoretical studies of multi-state vibronic interactions in polyatomic molecules.” After a postdoctoral stay at Goethe University Frankfurt, she led an independent junior research group funded by the elite postdoc program of the Baden-Württemberg Foundation. From 2014 to 2016, Prof. Faraji was a DAAD-sponsored visiting scientist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. In 2017, she was appointed Professor at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, where she served until 2024 before taking up a W3 Professorship at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf in April 2024.
The overarching goal of Prof. Faraji’s group is development and application of a theoretical framework that enables hybrid quantum/classical dynamics simulations of photoactive molecules with explicit inclusion of the complex environment. This will not only allow the computer simulations needed to translate experimental observations into atomic-level mechanistic pictures and to guide new experiments, but also facilitate the computer-aided design of new molecules with customized properties.
Throughout her career, she has received numerous honors, including the Burg Foundation Teaching Award (2015), the Robert Bosch Fellowship for Excellence and Leadership (2016), and the prestigious Vidi Grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) in 2018. She has successfully secured significant research funding, both individually and within large-scale consortia, at national and international levels (DAAD, NWO, EU, and more).
Prof. Faraji served as Chair of the “Computational and Theoretical Chemistry” section of the Royal Netherlands Chemical Society (2022–2024) and currently sits on the selection committee of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. She is also a board member of Q-Chem Inc., one of the world’s leading quantum chemistry software. In 2019, she was inducted into the Young Academy of Groningen.
A passionate advocate for women in STEM, she co-founded the "Women in Science and Engineering" (WISE) platform at the University of Groningen, dedicated to mentoring, training, and empowering women in their scientific careers.