Arash Mafi

Arash Mafi joined the University of Kansas in March 2023 as Executive Dean of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. Previously, he served as interim dean and full professor of physics and astronomy at the University of New Mexico.

A faculty member at UNM for eight years, Mafi served in a variety of administrative roles at UNM, which has one of the most diverse student bodies of any flagship university in the nation and is one of only a handful of research-intensive Hispanic-serving institutions. He spent five years as the director of UNM’s Center for High Technology Materials, an internationally renowned interdisciplinary research center. He also served one year as the chair for Optical Science and Engineering.

Mafi is a fellow of the International Society for Optics and Photonics, a fellow of Optica (formerly Optical Society of America) and a senior member of IEEE, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. His research has resulted in high-impact publications in several disciplines.

Mafi earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Iran, a master’s degree in physics and a doctorate in theoretical particle physics from The Ohio State University.  He held postdoctoral fellowships in particle physics and photonics at the University of Arizona. He worked as a senior research scientist for four years at Corning before returning to academia as an assistant professor and then associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.