Zahra received her B.Sc. and M.Sc. in physics from the Sharif University of Technology in Iran. In 2003, she joined James Forrest’s group in the University of Waterloo and studied the dynamics of polymers in thin films and on their surfaces. She received her Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Waterloo in 2007, for which she received the American Physical Society’s Padden award. From 2007 to 2008, Zahra worked in the Gilbert Walker’s group at the University of Toronto and studied the structure and chemical composition of block copolymers and protein aggregates using tip-enhanced near-field infrared imaging. Subsequently, she moved to Mark Ediger’s group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2009-2011) with an NSERC post-doctoral fellowship from the Canadian government. She joined Penn Chemistry in 2011, completing her transition from physicist to a chemist. She is currently an Associate Professor of Chemistry and the Graduate Chair of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania.
Since joining Penn Chemistry, Zahra and her group have explored properties of materials at nanometer lengths scales. In 2014 Zahra received an NSF Career award to study the properties of glassy materials at interfaces and at nanometer lengths scales. The group explores enhanced surface mobility and how it can enable the formation of stable amorphous packings. The group is also interested in understanding aggregation of peptides and proteins in two and three-dimensional geometries, as well as the interaction of light with nanoscale structures.
Zahra Fakhraai is the recipient of 2015 Sloan fellowship in Chemistry, 2017 Journal of Physical Chemistry B Lectureship Award, and 2017 University of Waterloo Young Alumni award. Zahra identifies as a material scientist interested in materials properties in small length scales and extremely slow dynamics.
Adding to this list of accolades, Zahra is the 2019 recipient of the John H. Dillon Medal, an award granted to "one person for outstanding accomplishment and unusual promise in research in polymer physics."
