Parinaz Naseri recently joined the University of Toronto’s Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) as an assistant professor, teaching stream. This past term, she taught ECE221: Electric and Magnetic Fields and ECE342: Computer Hardware.
Prior to joining the faculty, Naseri was a student, earning her PhD from U of T in 2023. Her graduate research focused on inverse design of electromagnetic metasurfaces using machine learning, with applications in satellite communications.
What drew you to join the University of Toronto, and what excites you most about being here?
I completed my PhD at the University of Toronto, where I felt consistently encouraged, supported and empowered, not only by my supervisor, but by the broader U of T community. Even after transitioning to industry, I stayed connected by returning as a guest lecturer.
Joining U of T as a faculty member felt like a natural way to give back; to contribute to the same culture of mentorship and excellence that shaped my own development. What excites me most is the opportunity to help train the next generation of engineers and to play a meaningful role in enriching the student experience in a way that reflects the support I once received.
What are the main areas of your research, and why are they important today?
My research sits at the intersection of electromagnetic engineered materials, specifically metasurfaces, and machine learning.
Metasurfaces enable highly compact, multi-functional systems that can precisely control electromagnetic waves. By integrating machine learning into their design, I focus on rethinking how these structures are created — replacing slow, intuition-driven design cycles with data-driven approaches that can quickly explore complex design spaces and uncover non-obvious, high-performance solutions.
This is particularly important today as demands grow in connectivity, advanced sensing, and real-time adaptability across applications such as wireless communications, imaging and next-generation radar systems. My work aims to develop scalable and intuitive design frameworks that make these technologies more powerful and more accessible.
At the same time, I’m passionate about making these concepts easier for students to grasp and engaging enough to inspire the next generation of researchers to contribute to this rapidly evolving field.
What is the most memorable experience in your career so far?
One of the most memorable moments in my career dates back to the European Conference on Antennas and Propagation in 2016. I was a master’s student presenting my work among leading experts and industry researchers.
After one presentation, I raised a technical question, pointing out that some of the challenges being discussed were already addressed in existing literature and that the proposed approach required further scrutiny. At the time, this was not necessarily the expected behavior for a student presenter, especially with my own talk coming up next, and I was advised afterward that it might have been better to stay silent. However, that moment unexpectedly became a turning point. The session chair engaged with my comment and later reached out to learn more about my work. This led to an invitation to join their research group in Portugal, where I worked on European Space Agency–funded projects for more than a year. That experience had a lasting impact on me; it reinforced the importance of engaging critically in technical discussions and showed me how moments of intellectual curiosity, even when uncomfortable, can open unexpected and meaningful research paths.
When did you know engineering was for you?
I think I realized engineering was for me quite early on, probably around age 10. I was always curious about how things worked, often to the point of taking them apart just to see what was inside. One of my first projects was building a simple stethoscope using things I found at home, including IV tubing and parts from a saline drip set. I made it for a school project, and I still remember that it actually worked! Getting positive feedback about it was a big moment of excitement for me at that age.
Around the same time, I also tried to take apart a few watches I’d been gifted, hoping I could figure out how to fix them. That part didn’t go as well; I never managed to put them back together properly. But looking back, those small experiments were probably the clearest early sign of where I was headed: I liked understanding how things worked from the inside, even if it meant breaking them first.
As a new professor, what’s one piece of advice you would give to new students?
I’d tell students not to be too quick to decide what they can or can’t do. A lot of growth comes from stepping into situations where you don’t feel fully ready yet. You don’t find out what you’re capable of just by thinking about it. You find out by trying things, even when they feel a bit out of reach. Skills aren’t something you wait for; they’re something you build by showing up, making mistakes, and trying again. So I’d say: take the chances that stretch you a little. That’s usually where the real learning starts.
What’s something students might be surprised to learn about you?
Students are often a bit surprised that I tend to turn everyday things into small problem-solving challenges. I’ll turn routine tasks into, “Can I do this a bit more efficiently?” moments without even thinking about it. It’s not something I consciously try to do; it just naturally happens. I think that the engineering way of thinking doesn’t just stay inside the university; it quietly shows up in ordinary parts of life too.
