About Me
The Moment Everything Changed: Vortices and COVID
Everything genuinely changed for me in 2019. It sounds dramatic, but that’s exactly how it felt. I was in an Intro to CFD course in Iran, clicking around in GAMBIT and ANSYS Fluent, supposedly studying aerosol movement in airplane cabins because COVID had just started showing up in the news. But I didn’t care about the assignment. I cared about the vortices.
Those swirling shapes, the flow patterns, the structures forming out of invisible equations…
I stared at them like, “wow, this is gorgeous.”
And then it hit me hard:
I was just clicking. I wasn’t doing CFD. I was using someone else’s solver, someone else’s assumptions, someone else’s decisions.
Right there I realized:
I don’t want to use scientific software. I want to build it.
I want to know how PDEs become algorithms, how algorithms become code, how code becomes those vortex patterns.
A high-level understanding never satisfies me. I need to dig all the way down to the mechanism, the structure, the why. That moment basically pushed me onto the path I’m on now.
From the Mountains of Iran to the Trails of California
I grew up on the eastern side of Iran, surrounded by mountains, farms, Persian poetry, and a lot of quiet space to think. I was the kid who asked why too many times and tried to solve problems nobody asked me to solve.
Then a severe tendon injury in high school literally stopped me from writing. Traumatic? Yes. Transformative? Also yes. It anchored me to movement and nature in a way that still defines me.
Coming to UC Santa Barbara felt like stepping into the life I was meant to have:
no black boxes, no clicking mindlessly, just math, algorithms, low-level C++, and all-nighters where a missing boundary condition ruins your week.
The ADHD Engineer Who Automates Everything
Let’s be honest.
Yes, I have ADHD.
Yes, I procrastinate.
Yes, I do things last minute.
And yes, that’s exactly why I love automation and software engineering.
If something irritates me more than twice, I automate it.
I’ve built:
- a job search tracker
- a night journal system
- a boiled egg timer because I kept messing up eggs
- an Arduino-coded automatic cat feeder
- an auto-grader for student assignments
Some people call this procrastination. I call it engineering.
Adaptive mesh refinement? Same principle.
“Let the computer figure out where to work harder so I don’t have to.”
My Flaws, Yes, I Know Them
- I try to do everything at the same time.
- I’m too hard on myself.
- I like coding only when physics or math is involved.
- My brain shuts down without challenge.
- I can’t let anything go until I understand it.
Being extremely analytical is both my superpower and my flaw. My friends suffer the consequences.
Cooking, My Secret Love Language
I’m actually a really good cook. I don’t follow recipes. I follow intuition, YouTube videos, random tips from friends, and the amount of love I feel for someone.
If I ever make these for you, it means you’re important:
- my signature shrimp pasta
- my secret-recipe salmon bowl
- my time-consuming, patience-requiring ghormeh sabzi
Cooking is how I show care when words fail.
Kickboxing, Boxing, and Trauma-Girl Energy
I always wanted to be a calm, soft, meditative Pilates girl like all the aesthetic influencers.
But let’s be honest, I’m not looking for relaxation.
I’m a trauma girl, so give me the intense violent shit.
Punching, kicking, sweating, pushing myself until my brain shuts up — that’s my therapy.
That’s where I feel normal.
(Yes, I will make a boxing page too.)
Fourier and the “How the Hell Did He Do That?” Problem
I think about this way too often:
How the fuck did Fourier invent functional spaces?
Imagine thinking outside the concept of vector spaces before vector spaces were even a thing.
Then calmly deciding that transforming from time to frequency domain should preserve energy.
Like, sir, what were you on?
This man casually invented an entire universe of thought.
Every time I do a Fourier transform, I have a tiny existential crisis.
If I Lived 29,673 Million Times…
I would still pursue science. Every single time.
Whether I was:
- a queen in 17th century France
- a hidden Mafia strategist in 19th century Italy
- a 1920s American housewife
- a Persian emperor in ancient times
I’d still be analytical, blunt, bold, justice-oriented, and obsessed with understanding the universe.
Hiking, Nature, and the GHMC Era
When I moved to California, hiking became my second home.
Hot Springs at night, McMenemy sunrises, John Muir Trail sections, summiting Mount Whitney.
One day I want to summit K2 and Damavand without oxygen because apparently I enjoy suffering.
I founded the Graduate Hiking and Movement Club (GHMC) — now 100+ members — because grad school is brutal and nature saves people.
My 2025 goals:
- lead 10 group hikes
- complete 28 hikes for my 28th birthday
- summit Half Dome
- summit Whitney again
(Hiking photo page coming too.)
Acting, Literature, and Mafia
Before all this, I was an actress at the University of Tehran Cinema Center, which explains why my presentations sometimes feel like performances.
I love Persian and French literature (17th century France owns my heart).
And I’m a pro Mafia player, which is basically debugging but with humans.
Why I Do Science
My research is about bridging scales, connecting microscopic chaos to macroscopic structure.
Protein aggregation, neural oscillators — it’s always the same obsession:
How does something small turn into something big?
How does chaos create order?
My proudest project is CASL-HJX, a Hamilton-Jacobi solver with 50× speedup using AMR.
I built it to understand every detail. And I do.
What’s Next
I’m entering my fourth year of my PhD and will be on the job market in Summer 2026. I want to:
- develop new computational methods
- design open-source solvers
- apply math and physics to real problems
- teach and mentor
- automate as much as possible
I’m open to academia, national labs, and research scientist roles.
Let’s Connect
If you want to collaborate, talk PDEs, debug something cursed, go hiking, discuss trauma boxing therapy, or try my shrimp pasta:
Email: faranakrajabi@ucsb.edu
And if you want food, hiking, or boxing pics, don’t worry, they’re coming.