Tragically, we have recently learned that SSP Fellow and STEM Fellowship Co-Founder, Mohammad Asadi-Lari, and his sister Zeynab Asadi-Lari, were aboard Ukrainian International Airlines flight PS752 that crashed in Iran shortly after takeoff. Mohammad worked tirelessly to develop STEM Fellowship’s mission and vision, serving as the first Chair of the STEM Fellowship Journal’s Student Editorial Board and expanding the scope of the Big Data challenge. His sister Zeynab, created STEM Fellowship’s Human Resources team and founded a STEM Fellowship branch at the University of Toronto Mississauga.
Mohammad at our 2016 Annual Meeting in Vancouver
Mohammad was awarded an SSP Student Fellowship in 2016, while he was a student in the Cellular, Anatomical and Physiological Sciences (CAPS) program at the University of British Columbia. I had the pleasure to be matched with him as a Mentor at our 2016 Annual Meeting and we quickly developed a lively friendship that continued to this day.
In addition to serving on multiple SSP committees during his time as a member, he also became an ORCID and Altmetric Ambassador, giving a number of talks, including a very memorable session at the American Association for the Advancement of Science “Research without Borders” meeting.
Mohammad was a wonderful advocate for youth engagement, leading initiatives in the Canadian Commission for UNESCO, the Canadian Red Cross, and the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, among many others. In his TEDxYouth talk, “Empowering Youth to Think Global but Act Local,” it is clear the impact Mohammad had on our community.
On behalf of the Society for Scholarly Publishing, we send our most heartfelt sympathies to Mohammad and Zeynab’s family and friends in the wake of this terrible tragedy.
Warmest Regards,
Adrian Stanley
Managing Director, Publishers, Digital Science
Past President, The Society for Scholarly Publishing
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