Our department suffered a grievous loss on Wednesday January 8, 2020. Mansour Esnaashary Esfahani, one of our doctoral students, was onboard flight PS725 that crashed in Iran resulting in the tragic deaths of all those aboard. Our thoughts are with his family, his recent bride, Hanieh, and his friends. We mourn his passing.
The University’s flags have been lowered, and a memorial service was held for Mansour Esnaashary Esfahani and Marzieh (Mari) Foroutan (another victim of the crash who was a Waterloo student) by the Iranian Students' Association of Waterloo the evening of the 8th in the Student Life Centre, where many kind words were spoken and memories shared. Tributes have flowed in from many people in our department who knew Mansour:
“I've known him to be absolutely lovely.”
“ . . . it is an extremely sad event for all of us.”
“ Even in the few events that I shared with him in the meetings make me appreciate that he was a very special kind and special person; what a tragedy.”
“I did get to interact with him a fair bit last semester where he served as one of my CAs. From those interactions, I did get the opportunity to observe his competence and professional attitude toward his work, his pleasant demeanor, and the kind and open manner in which he interacted with everyone else. In fact, a few days ago and before hearing this horrible news, I was literally having a conversation with the structures lab technicians about how lucky we were to have Mansour take charge of the CivE Design Days activities last semester and how we hoped to recruit him to be involved again next year.”
“I have several students who were particularly close to him and are gutted.…I could always count on him for a friendly smile and "hi prof" when we passed in the hall. He was obviously a great young man and very well liked.”
The University will commemorate Mansour and Mari with an event at Federation Hall on Wednesday, January 15 at Noon. Please contact the department if you knew Mansour and would like to contribute in some way.