Ali A. Kiafar holds a master’s degree in architecture and city planning from the National University of Iran and a Ph.D. In urban and regional planning from the University of Southern California. From 1980 on, Dr. Kiafar has taught at the University of Southern California and University of California – Riverside. He also has more than four decades of experience in professional practice and university teaching in architecture, urban development/ redevelopment, educational facilities planning and design, educational master planning, and program management.
Dr. Kiafar’s professional tenure includes both private and public sectors. For more than three decades he held top executive positions in the public school system in California. Also, for a decade he was vice president in charge of educational facilities programs at a 72,000-employee international planning, design, and construction firm, having 146 offices in 48 countries. In these capacities Ali Kiafar supervised the planning, design, and construction of educational facilities programs at some of the largest educational institutions in Southern California. Personally, he has been directly involved in the planning, design, construction, and program management of over $1,800,000,000 of capital improvement projects.
Ali Kiafar has been widely recognized for his achievements and has received several major awards, grants and appointments to high level positions including, but not limited, to the following:
* Excellence in Teaching Award — University of California Riverside
* Best Community Development Award — American Institute of Architects
* Appointment to State-wide Implementation Task Force, Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS) — State of California
* Designation as Recognized Educational Facility Planner — The Council of Educational Facility Planners International (one of only 200 professionals worldwide who have received this recognition)
Included in recognitions and awards bestowed on Dr. Kiafar is the Architecture and City Planning Book Award from Association of Luminaries of Architecture in Iran.
Dr. Kiafar has been active in several international, national, and state academic, research and professional organizations. He has been invited to and given lectures at a wide range of universities, conferences, workshops, and seminars throughout the world. He has organized many local and national conferences and workshops on an expansive list of topics, ranging from technical and professional subjects to research and analysis of socio-political issues.
Ali Kiafar has published tens of articles and book chapters in prestigious professional and academic journals, books, trade magazines and newsletters in the United States and overseas. He has been on the cover of and featured in major professional publications and trade magazines such as Building Operating Management, a professional magazine in the building and construction industry in the United States. The Prestige Magazine has written a five-page article about him as one of the most prominent Iranian Americans. Further, tens of times he has had talk segments, been interviewed and quoted by major United States radio and television networks, and print media such as CBS Radio, Los Angeles Times, ABC TV, Radio Hamrah, and KIRN Radio. The Los Angeles Times has selected Dr. Kiafar as one of the 50 most influential people in Burbank, California.
The latest scholarly work of Dr. Ali Kiafar is a six-volume book on the transformations of society, culture, identity, cities, city planning and architecture in Iran during the times of modernity. The first volume of this series, titled An Aperture to City Planning and Architecture in Iran — A Centennial of Experience: Society, City Planning and Urban Design in Modern Times, has been published; the remaining volumes are in the process of publications starting in 2024.
