Sharif Family Fellowship Invests in the Next Generation of Researchers

A graduate fellowship enabled Masoud Sharif (PhD ’06) to conduct award-winning doctoral research at Caltech. Now he hopes to help future graduate students make breakthroughs of their own.

When Masoud Sharif (PhD ’06) was deciding where to pursue his doctorate, he received an intriguing offer: Babak Hassibi, a leading researcher in information theory and signal processing, had recently left Bell Labs to join the Caltech faculty. Hassibi, who would go on to serve as an executive officer for the electrical engineering department and be named the Mose and Lillian S. Bohn Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computing and Mathematical Sciences, was inviting Sharif to study under him. "I thought he was the perfect fit for me," Sharif says.

The opportunity became even more appealing when Sharif learned he would receive a fellowship to support his studies. "Coming from Iran, US tuition wasn't cheap," Sharif says. "Having that opportunity, where someone pays for your tuition and gives you a living stipend, was amazing."

At Caltech, Sharif completed a thesis that helped advance technologies used in modern wireless networks. The work earned the 2006 Charles Wilts Prize, the highest dissertation honor from the Caltech electrical engineering department.

"I would not have done it without the fellowship," Sharif says. "That's what gave me a chance to come here."

Now he's hoping to give future students the same opportunity through a gift establishing the endowed Sharif Family Engineering Graduate Fellowship. The fund will support graduate students, with a preference for those in computing and mathematical sciences and electrical engineering.

Pushing the Limits of Wireless

Growing up in a family of engineers, Sharif had long been drawn to the intersection of mathematics and engineering and subsequently earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran. During his undergraduate and master's studies, he became fascinated by information theory and wireless communications—fields rapidly evolving as mobile technology expanded. At Caltech, he found the ideal mentor in Hassibi.

"You go to the whiteboard and start explaining an idea, and then he gets it so quickly," Sharif recalls with a laugh. "You're like, 'Come on, man! I spent a month figuring this out.'"

Sharif's doctoral thesis work centered on the fundamental performance limits of communication and studies the practical schemes possible to achieve those limits. Working with Hassibi, he established the mathematical basis for limiting signal spikes while still transmitting large volumes of data. The findings helped lay the groundwork for today's 4G and 5G networks. One chapter of the thesis has been cited more than 1,600 times.

"You always hope that your work will have an impact," Sharif says. "I've enjoyed seeing others continue to move the research forward."

Empowering Future Researchers

After completing his PhD, Sharif joined the electrical and computer engineering faculty at Boston University before moving into finance. Today, he is managing director at PIMCO, where he co-leads portfolio management analytics. Looking back, he views his time at Caltech as pivotal.

"The friends, classmates, and professors there inspired me to push myself," Sharif says. "They made me mentally stronger."

Sharif hopes that the Sharif Family Engineering Graduate Fellowship will allow more graduate students to benefit from the same rigorous yet supportive environment that helped him thrive.

Harry Atwater, the Otis Booth Leadership Chair of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science, Howard Hughes Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science, and Director of the Liquid Sunlight Alliance, says fellowships like Sharif's are essential to Caltech's research mission.

"Graduate students are the engine of research at Caltech," Atwater says. "Fellowships such as the one Masoud Sharif has established make it possible to recruit exceptional students from anywhere in the world and give them the freedom to do their best work."

For Sharif, the decision to give was easy. "Caltech placed a bet on me," he says. "I just want to give back."