Shouleh Nikzad


Shouleh Nikzad is an Iranian-American electronic engineer and research scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She leads the Advanced Detector Arrays, Systems, and Nanoscience Group. Her research considers ultraviolet and low-energy particle detectors, nanostructure devices and novel spectrometers. Nikzad is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the National Academy of Inventors and SPIE.
WWW pma.caltech.edu/people/sh...

Early life and education

As an undergraduate, Nikzad majored in electronic engineering at the University of Southern California. She moved to California Institute of Technology for graduate studies, where she earned her Ph.D. in 1983. Nikzad investigated compound materials that had been produced through ion beam sputtering using laser spectroscopy.

Research and career

Nikzad was appointed an electro-optics engineer at Pacific Infrared. She moved to the Argonne National Laboratory as a graduate fellow in 1998, before joining California Institute of Technology as a postdoctoral fellow in 1990. After two years at Caltech, Nikzad moved to Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where she focused on imaging and detector systems. At the JPL, Nikzad designed curved imaging systems, which, inspired by the human eye, can support high quality imaging in large telescopes.
As of 2019, Nikzad is a senior research scientist and principal engineer at JPL where she leads the Advanced Detector Arrays, Systems, and Nanoscience Group.

Awards and honors