Shouleh Nikzad: Sharpening Humanity’s Eyes in Space Exploration and Medical Science
With the goal of harnessing the untapped potential of Iranian-Americans, and to build the capacity of the Iranian diaspora in effecting positive change in the U.S. and around the world, the Iranian Americans’ Contributions Project (IACP) has launched a series of interviews that explore the personal and professional backgrounds of prominent Iranian-Americans who have made seminal contributions to their fields of endeavour. We examine lives and journeys that have led to significant achievements in the worlds of science, technology, finance, medicine, law, the arts and numerous other endeavors. Our latest interviewee is Shouleh Nikzad.
Dr. Shouleh Nikzad is a Senior Research Scientist and Principal Engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, where she leads the Advanced Detector Arrays, Systems, and Nanoscience Group. She leads a multidisciplinary team of cosmologists, material scientists, chemists, electrical engineers, physicists, and others to tackle key challenges in space exploration and medical science.
She holds a PhD in Applied Physics from Caltech, a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering from Caltech and a BS degree in Electrical Engineering (Electrophysics) with honors from USC. She has over 100 peer-reviewed publications and holds 20 US patents. She is the co-founder, co-Lead and the Technical Director of the JPL Medical Engineering Forum and a visiting faculty and a lecturer at Caltech’s Physics Math, and Astronomy Division and the Caltech Medical Engineering Department. She has held visiting scientist positions at Cedar Sinai’s Neurosurgery Department and USC Keck School of Medicine, Department of Neurosurgery. Her interests in research span a wide range of fields, including nanotechnology, materials, imaging devices, instruments and their applications in astrophysics, planetary science, space weather, and medicine.
Dr. Nikzad is the recipient of several awards including NASA Honor Awards, Society for Brain Mapping and Therapeutics (SBMT)’s Pioneer in Medicine Award, and NASA-JPL Technology Application Program award. Elected as a Fellow to the National Academy of Inventors, she is also a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and a Fellow of the SPIE (Society of Photo-optical Instrumentation Engineers). She was awarded the IEEE Distinguished Lectureship for 2019–2020 term by the IEEE Photonics Society.
Tell our readers where you grew up and walk us through your background. How did your family and surroundings influence you in your formative years?
I grew up in numerous Iranian cities, and spent the last few years in Tehran, where I finished High School. My family and the educators in my preschool and first elementary school –especially Mrs. Prousky — were among the greatest influences of my early years. The intense academic environment in high school and my smart and motivated peers also helped shaped my outlook and interests. My family emphasized education and intellectual pursuits. Although my family’s interests and focus were not on the physical sciences, we enjoyed philosophical discussions at meal times and at many gatherings at our home. We were always encouraged to be inquisitive, understand things deeply, and work hard. Our home was stocked with a great variety of books. Another factor was the the value that my family placed on humor, which has become my go-to tool to deal with stress.
Growing up as the youngest of five children, I often heard my dad saying, “When you enter a place, act as if you belong and no one will question your belonging.” When we were kids, I thought he meant parties or other social occasions. Later in life, my experiences as an immigrant in the US, a woman in engineering, a woman in physics, and as a physicist in medicine, helped me to fully understand his lesson. My parents encouraged me to take risks and reach for what I wanted. My mother taught me very early in life to be an advocate for myself. Even in preschool, when I complained that I wanted to be placed in a more challenging and more senior grade, she encouraged me to talk to the higher-grade teacher myself. That strategy worked, and that was a big lesson for me.
The summer after my first year in high school, I read a book on NASA’s early space program and the Apollo Moon program. That was a defining moment for me, and I announced to my family and friends that I would one day get my PhD in physics and work for NASA. Things didn’t turn out exactly as I had imagined. A lot happened between that moment and the start of my career at JPL. Somewhere along the way, I even forgot the “work for NASA” part, but I never lost my interest in the field of astrophysics.
Had it not been for the Iranian revolution of 1979, I would have probably followed my original plan of staying in Iran for my undergraduate degree. Instead, I came to the US amid Iran’s political upheavals, arriving in Los Angeles only days before the start of my freshman year at the University of Southern California. The story of my getting into USC is a bit unusual. Being well past the deadlines for application and admission, my sister who was a graduate student in the Education department at USC, took my grades and records to her dean and asked if they could review my file for a late admission. She was referred to the Dean of Engineering who, upon seeing my grades and standing in nation-wide competitions, opined that “we need to bring her here as we need students like her.”
I was fortunate that my sister was at USC, but times were still uncertain and worry-ridden for me because of the family and country I had left behind. What sustained me was my love of learning, the responsibility I felt for the circumstances of my leaving, and the support of my family.
During this time, I was also fortunate to form a number of great and lasting friendships.
I chose Electrical Engineering (with an emphasis in Electrophysics) over physics at USC for multiple reasons. There was some cultural pressure to have a “useful” BS degree but more importantly, USC’s EE department was very strong, and some of the EE faculty members convinced me that there was more to EE than designing circuits (although I did enjoy that) and that I could continue in other fields in grad school. Eventually, I would come back to physics.
After I received my BSEE from USC, I worked for two years in industry. Working offered opportunities to gain experience, support myself, and, most importantly, to be sponsored for US permanent residency. During these years, I worked simultaneously on my Masters degree in EE at the California Institute of Technology. That was a challenging period of time. Caltech’s requirements specified that I had to be a full-time student (taking at least four classes), while the company which sponsored me for my Green Card and paid for my MS degree also required that I work at least 30 hours a week. While demanding, this experience also provided a great opportunity. I remember one of my colleagues at the company gave me a great piece of advice. He said that, “two years is very short compared to the span of your life. So, it’s worth the hardship to gain the reward.”
You have received a number of awards and honors for your research, scholarship and patents. What were the significant accomplishments that led to these?
Because of my background in physics, my approach has been to study the fundamentals and apply those toward the end goal of making better devices or instruments that would have a strong impact on the exploration of space. Our earlier work on materials and fundamentals has led to several inventions that not only enable better space instruments, but have been licensed for terrestrial applications.
One of our main achievements was the invention of curved imagers, which was inspired by human eyes and their curved retina. There had been attempts in the past to make curved imagers, but the methods were costly and impractical. My idea was to separate the fabrication of silicon imaging arrays from the required curvature of the array. Once we established that, then we could invent multiple ways of implementing the curved imager. It was a fun project that caught the attention of the imaging, astrophysics, and the medical communities.
Having a curved array enables high quality imaging in very large telescopes, and it also enables high-quality cameras to fit in a very small package, such as a smart phone, which is why our patent has been licensed by several imaging industry leaders. Using an analogy from human anatomy, our eyes and brain form a very powerful camera that’s encased in a very small package. Part of the reason is that the retina is curved in order to match the optical wave fronts. That means that there’s no need for additional lenses to correct the image quality. The eye is an astoundingly intricate biological machine. One of the reasons for my interest in the curved array was the potential for its use in retinal prosthetics to help the blind.
Our work has also produced ultraviolet imagers that are ten times better than current state-of-the-art technologies, opening up possibilities to produce measurements on very faint sources and to address NASA’s questions, such as learning whether an extra-solar planet is potentially habitable. These inventions for space exploration have shown potential for medical and biological applications.
Early in my career, I received a Young Investigator Award — the Lew Allen Award — named after the renowned physicist and former JPL Director. This was in recognition of my work in fundamentals of charged particles’ interactions with semiconductors, which allowed us to invent better ion detectors and electron detectors. That invention enables more capable and compact instruments for solar wind and space weather studies. This is significant because volume and mass are at a premium in space flight. It could also have an impact on medical tools for diagnosis and treatment. This technology also enables small, miniature scanning electron microscopes. My work in this area also disproved some established beliefs regarding ion detection, which made the accomplishment more impactful.
What has been your personal key to success? What were the biggest inspirations for your career?
The support and encouragement of my family, especially my father and his emphasis on hard work and the work ethic, has been instrumental for me. My dad always told me that I could achieve anything I put my mind to. I don’t give up easily, and that has been key to succeeding in the laboratory, convincing people of my ideas, and in sticking with people whom I have had the opportunity to mentor.
My father emphasized the value of higher education, being sharp and aware, and working hard. On top of that, all of us in the family knew that being a “human” was far more important than being “learned,” and he often quoted the famous Persian saying to that effect. Being human comprises simple but fundamental qualities such as being kind and considerate of others, doing the right thing, and having convictions.
The high quality of the education I received in Iran was a key factor. Math, physics, science, and literature were all pillars of our learning for a wide range of students. I had a strong grounding in math and physics when I came here to attend USC and would later serve me well at Caltech. I am indebted to those dedicated teachers.
Another crucial factor for me has been choosing my very supportive life partner. My husband and I had what we call in physics “a two-body problem,” so after receiving our PhDs from Caltech, we searched for employment that would allow both of us to pursue our professional goals while being able to live together. We chose postdoctoral fellowships at Caltech (for me) and JPL (for my husband) over more lucrative opportunities in industry. The idea of continuing in research and being part of NASA and Caltech was an exciting opportunity and would presage later achievements.
Your research interests span a wide range including materials, detectors, and applications in planetary sciences, and medicine. Can you share some highlights of your work in these areas?
The common thread in the approach to all of these topics starts from a science question, translating the question to a measurable quantity, and identifying the technology that is required to make the measurement. If the technology exists, use it. If not, invent it. A number of my patents began with my conversations with astrophysicists, space plasma physicists, and later with medical scientists.
Specifically, my work has focused on measuring or “seeing” high energy photons, ranging from ultraviolet to soft x rays. Detectors are the heart of scientific instruments. A large and powerful telescope that is put into orbit at great expense can collect a lot of light but if an inferior detector is used at its focal plane, then most of the gathered photons will be abandoned along with the information that the photons carry. By using an inferior detector, we would waste a lot of resources. Conversely, if you make a very powerful image sensor or detector, you could save NASA (and the nation) a great deal of money and time by allowing us to fly smaller telescopes and more compact instruments.
The key focus of my work has been inventing ways of making better detectors and imagers. To achieve that, we have had to work in nano-scale. Using nano science, crystal growth, and atomic scale deposition processes, we have been able to engineer the very first few nanometers of silicon or other semiconductors. Nano-engineered surfaces and interfaces enable us to tailor how photons interact with detectors, and therefore we can develop more powerful cameras for NASA’s telescopes and instruments. I have applied similar nano-scale engineering to other materials beyond silicon and to other technologies besides imagers. Seeing similarities in your work with an unfamiliar field and applying the same principles to the new field can be a successful strategy. Applying NASA’s unique detectors to new applications such as medicine has extended the impact of my work beyond NASA.
One of your key contributions has been bridging space technology and medical science: mapping and seeing the galaxy and the human brain. Can you elaborate?
A friend of mine says that I make “cameras for stars” for a living, which, given our physical proximity to Hollywood, creates a double meaning. But what I have really dealt with is the stars in the heavens.
To understand how the solar system has formed, it is important to study primitive bodies — the so-called building blocks of the solar system: asteroids, comets, Kuiper belt objects, etc. I work in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum and there are many diagnostic signatures in the ultraviolet spectral range. Detecting star light passing through molecules, atoms, and molecular fragments of a planet atmosphere is like a detective gathering clues to find out whether the planet has signs of a habitable environment. Similar techniques can help determine the nature of plumes on Europa and whether the observed plumes are actually jets of water.
Looking even farther back in time, going in reverse toward the big bang –in a sense doing archeology in space — we can study the formation of galaxies and stars by detecting and quantifying their ultraviolet signatures. In all these cases, the signal is very faint and we are talking about detecting only a few photons. To glean information, it is important to make detectors that can pick up single photons. We have realized that there are signs of disease, cancer, infection, etc. that could potentially be detected if you could pick up their signature in the form of a single particle of light (single photons) and we have the passion for using this technology for humanitarian and medical purposes.
And this is how physics and space technologies are shaping the future of neuroscience?
This is a very good question. It might not be obvious at first glance, how technologies developed for space exploration could shape the future of medicine and neuroscience. The way I look at it, technology applications in space are highly synergistic with neuroscience/neurosurgery, and medicine more broadly. Both fields are pushing the limits for sensors in sensitivity, in resource requirements, in accuracy, autonomy, and more. To me, this is a natural and logical relationship. In an article in the magazine “SPIE Professional”, I delve into some of the details of the synergy. I also wrote an editorial piece for a special issue of Neurophotonics journal that touches on the issue.
What is the biggest challenge you have overcome in your career?
It is undeniable that there are external obstacles. There are technical challenges — sometimes you are tackling a seemingly insurmountable technical problem. There are practical challenges, such as finding the funds to pursue a research effort. There are sometimes even political obstacles and human issues. There are challenges in being a woman in engineering or physics, or being a physicist in medicine. There are also challenges in being an immigrant and having to learn to navigate the new culture and language. Personally, as challenging as some of these have been, I found that internal challenges are the most difficult to overcome. Once you conquer those, you can deal with practically any external issues.
In your view, what is the biggest challenge with which your field is currently grappling?
My work is multidisciplinary so I’ll parse your question based on the individual disciplines:
We are at a point in space exploration and observation where most of the low-hanging fruit have been picked. In order to push beyond past discoveries, we need to push the limits of technology or invent new ways of seeing. One of humanity’s biggest questions has been “are we alone?” Searching for habitable worlds requires inventing new technologies to “see” and examine planets far from our solar system.
As humans in an overcrowded and highly interconnected world, we are facing healthcare challenges. Due to medical advances, we tend to live longer but we are facing a major challenge in understanding how our brain ages. This goes back to understanding the fundamentals. As Stephen Hawking said, “understanding one’s own brain is a complex undertaking,” as he encouraged scientists like me to pursue this field. One of NASA’s objectives is “to improve life here.” One way of doing that is to re-purpose our space technology for medical applications.
We are pushing to see single photons (particles of light) in “colors” that eyes cannot see. Technologically speaking, it’s an exciting time and we are pushing the limits of fabrication and Moore’s Law by going to nano-scale fabrication and pushing past the limits of conventional materials.
Can you share your thoughts on your Iranian-American identity? What does it mean to be an Iranian-American to you?
There is probably not a single day that I speak with my American colleagues without bringing up a Farsi saying. The rich cultural heritage that we bring to the US is very important to me, a culture imbued with poetry and colored with thousands of years of history. I also admire the American culture and have tried to strike a balance between the two cultures. I’ve attempted to raise my two daughters with the combined values of my Persian heritage and my adopted American identity. That is the beauty of being an immigrant: we have a chance to develop a new culture that can embody the best of both worlds.
Dr. Shouleh Nikzad, 2013/10th Annual World Brain Mapping of SBMT and Brain Mapping Foundation Pioneer in Medicine Award.
