Dr. Mahdi Zarghami is currently a professor of water management at the University of Tehran. He received a Bachelor of Civil Engineering from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran in 1998, a Master of Science in Systems Engineering from the Institute of Research on Planning and Management, Tehran, and a PhD in Water Management from Sharif University of Technology in 2007 under the supervision of Dr. Reza Ardakanian, former Iranian Minister of Energy. In his dissertation, he pioneered a revised uncertain operator for ranking water resources development projects in Iran. In 2006-2007, he was a visiting researcher at the Department of Systems and Industrial Engineering at the University of Arizona, where he worked with Professor Ferenc Szidarovszky. After completing his PhD, Mahdi accepted a faculty position at the University of Tabriz, where he worked for 16 years. During this time, he initiated the Water Diplomacy Room as an NGO and the Institute of Environment. During this time, he worked by the Water Diplomacy Programme jointly run by Tufts-Harvard and MIT Universities in Boston in 2014-2015. He also worked at the MIT's Socio-Technical Systems Research Centre and Comprehensive Initiative on Technology Evaluation. In 2023, Mahdi accepted a professorship at the Faculty of Governance, University of Tehran, where he has been working ever since. During his time at the University of Tehran, Mahdi is the Deputy Dean of the Governance and Policy Lab at this university.