Scholarship and memorial fund created to remember University community members
The University of Waterloo has created a scholarship and memorial fund to honour the memories of members of the University community who died in the crash of Ukrainian International Airlines Flight PS752 in Iran.
Remembered are Marzieh (Mari) Foroutan, a Faculty of Environment doctoral student, Mansour Esnaashary Esfahani, a Faculty of Engineering doctoral student, Mojgan Daneshmand (PhD ’06, Electrical Engineering), her husband Pedram Moussavi, a former Waterloo Engineering postdoctoral fellow, and their two young children, Daria and Dorina, as well as former School of Optometry doctoral student Neda Saddighi.
The University is seeking to raise money for the Mari Foroutan Memorial Graduate Scholarship and the Iranian Student Memorial Engineering Fund. The goal is to create a legacy of support for generations of students to come. The University will match donations up to a total of $100,000.
In the past month, Canada's academic community has come together to remember and mourn the 176 people who lost their lives in the crash.
Hundreds of Waterloo students, faculty and staff attended a campus memorial service on January 15, with another 1,000 people tuning into the event via livestream.
Esfahani, 29, had gone home to Iran to get married and was returning to campus to finish his civil engineering doctoral 
research into construction automation and management. Hanieh, his new wife of less than a week, planned to join him in Waterloo in February.
Mansour Esnaashary Esfahani was a highly regarded civil engineering doctoral student.
“Mansour was a sweet, capable, enthusiastic guy who was very well-liked amongst his fellow students,” said Carl Haas, chair of Waterloo’s civil and environmental engineering department, and Esfahani's doctoral supervisor. “His research on adaptive reuse projects in the circular economy will have long-lasting impact.”
Daneshmand (PhD '06, Electrical) was a member of Waterloo Engineering Professor Raafat Mansour’s research group from 2002 to 2006 as a graduate student and later as a post-doctoral fellow for two years. She was the recipient of two NSERC scholarships as a PhD student and as a post-doctoral fellow.
Daneshmand joined the University of Alberta as a faculty member in 2008 and was the Canada Research Chair Tier II in Radio Frequency (RF) Microsystems for Communication and Sensing.
From left are Mojgan Daneshmand (PhD ’06, Electrical), her husband Pedram Moussavi, a former Waterloo Engineering postdoctoral fellow, and their two young daughters, Daria and Dorina.
Her husband, Pedram Moussavi, was a postdoctoral fellow in Waterloo's electrical and computer engineering department with Professor Safieddin Safavi-Naeini’s research group and worked in local industry. He joined the University of Alberta as a faculty member in 2009.
The couple's two daughters, Daria and Dorina, also died in the plane crash.
Alumni and other members of the University community, as well as the public, can make a gift directly to the memorial funds online. Any questions about the funds can be directed to Prachi Surti in the Faculty of Engineering or Maryam Latifpoor-Keparoutis in the Faculty of Environment.
