Firouz Naderi

Firouz Michael Naderi (فیروز نادری: Fīrouz Nāderi; March 25, 1946 – June 9, 2023) was an Iranian American scientist who spent 36 years in various technical and executive positions at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where he contributed to some of America's robotic space missions. Naderi retired from NASA in 2016 and most recently was a management consultant, an advisor to early-stage high-tech startups, and a public speaker. He was based in Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. Firouz Michael Naderi was born on March 15, 1946, in Shiraz, but his birth was recorded on March 25, 1946. His elementary education was in Shiraz, Iran. He attended high school in Tehran, Iran at highly valued Andisheh High School and left Iran in 1964 for the United States to pursue his college education. He received his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering at Iowa State University (ISU) in 1969 before moving to California. After working as an engineer in Santa Barbara for two years, he enrolled at University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles where he received his M.S. in 1972 and his Ph.D. in 1976 both in electrical engineering. After completing his education, he went back to Iran for three years, working at the Iranian Remote Sensing Agency but returned to America in July 1979 a few months after Iran's revolution. He has not returned to Iran since. He was fluent in English in addition to his native Persian language. Naderi started at NASA's JPL in September 1979 as a communications system engineer, and in a course of a three-decade career rose through the ranks to senior executive positions. His career at JPL has spanned system engineering, technology development, program and project management for satellite communications systems, Earth remote sensing observatories, astrophysical observatories, and planetary systems. His early work at JPL was on system design of large satellite-based systems for nationwide cellular phone coverage.