Shima Parsa - Featured Faculty 2025
Shima Parsa
College of Science
Shima Parsa is an Assistant Professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy, with joint appointments at the Center for Imaging Science and the Microsystems Engineering program. Her research focuses on the emergence of nonlinear dynamics in highly correlated systems at the intersection of materials science and energy. She leads a team of interdisciplinary PhD and Master’s students investigating how microscale dynamics and self-organization in complex fluids give rise to large-scale material properties, with applications in novel soft materials and energy production. She is a Scialog Fellow of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement and an executive member of the American Physical Society’s Division of Nonlinear and Statistical Physics.
Prof. Parsa received her BS and MS in Applied Physics from Iran and her PhD in Physics from Wesleyan University, where she studied material transport in turbulence. She then joined the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University as a postdoctoral researcher in Soft Matter Physics. In 2019, she joined the Physics faculty at RIT and established the Laboratory of Soft Materials and Complex Fluids.
As new materials are developed and energy demands grow in a resource-limited environment, advancing bottom-up approaches to the assembly and growth of functional materials—including everyday materials and artificial soft tissues—requires both new methods and fundamental understanding. Prof. Parsa’s research team investigates material properties and transport phenomena in model soft materials, focusing on the dynamics and self-organization of soft matter in complex networks. Using advanced soft lithography and fluorescence imaging, her group informs analytical and numerical models for future materials development. Her research has been supported by federal and private foundations, including the NSF CAREER Award, the NSF Engineering Research Initiation program, and the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund.
Shima Parsa
Associate Professor
School of Physics and Astronomy
College of Science