Endowment sought for ‘shining star’

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This article was published 10/02/2020 (2274 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A University of Manitoba professor is raising funds to honour the memory of a “shining star” biomedical engineering student who was among the 176 people killed when Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 was shot down last month in Iran.

Amir Ghassemi was a physician from Iran working on his master’s degree at the U of M. He went back to Iran during the Christmas break to get engaged and visit his family, said Zahra Moussavi, director of the biomedical engineering program.

“He was a shining star,” Moussavi said of Ghassemi, who was killed Jan. 8, minutes after takeoff from Tehran, when the Iranian military fired on the passenger jet.

The untimely death of the friendly, charismatic and brilliant 32-year-old — whose research contributions held promise of helping those living with epilepsy — hit local instructors and students hard, rallying Moussavi to raise funds to establish an endowment at the U of M in his memory.

In the month since, contacting donors by phone and through email has raised close to $12,000 for the Ghassemi memorial scholarship fund, which requires at least $25,000 to be established. Moussavi said she is aiming for $1 million, so $10,000 bursaries can be granted every year.

(Donors can find the U of M fundraiser online at wfp.to/ghassemi. Tax receipts will be issued.)

The move to honour their lost loved one is a comfort to Ghassemi’s grieving family.

“It’s one of the best things that could’ve happened,” his brother, Dr. Amirreza Ghassemi, a St. Louis-based dentist and professor, said in an interview Monday.  “We were very happy to hear about that.”

Their mother, a general practitioner, and father, a university dean of neurology, live and work in Iran. They were all there together at Christmas time, he said.

“It was a family reunion,” said Amirreza Ghassemi, who left a week before his younger brother’s fateful return flight.

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Amirreza Ghassemi was in Winnipeg for the first time last week, settling his brother’s affairs. The tight-knit pair, who Facetimed every day, had planned to get together in Manitoba this spring or summer, the older brother said by phone.

“He was supposed to show me around,” he said. “For me, as a brother, I’m going to miss him.”

Amirreza Ghassemi said he expects more details about the endowment fund will be available later this month.

His brother would be pleased, he said. “He was, all the time, concerned about others. He was very supportive and caring.”

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca

Carol Sanders
Legislature reporter

Carol Sanders is a reporter at the Free Press legislature bureau. The former general assignment reporter and copy editor joined the paper in 1997. Read more about Carol.

Every piece of reporting Carol produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.