Maziar Ashrafian Bonab

Maziar Ashrafian Bonab (Persian: مازیار اشرفیان بناب) is an Iranian forensic and medical geneticist, specialising in forensic genetics[1] (the use of the DNA markers in the investigation of crimes and ancestry) and Forensic Facial Reconstruction. His groundbreaking research uses human DNA markers (mainly mtDNA and the Y chromosome markers) to identify the ancestral history of humans/human populations in both anthropological and forensic cases. His main area of research is the population history of the Middle East, specifically Iran.

Maziar was born in Tehran, Iran (20 September 1966). Before completing his PhD in Cambridge, he first qualified as a Medical Doctor from Tehran University of Medical Sciences (1984–1991) and worked as a Medical Practitioner in Iran. After completing a postgraduate course in Forensic Medicine at the Iranian Legal Medical Organization (1992), he worked as the head of Hormozgan Province Legal medical Centre (Iran) for four years (1992–1996). As well as dealing with many different forensic cases and having done more than 400 autopsies, he taught forensic medicine and medical anthropology to the undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes within the Bandar-Abbas University of Medical Sciences and Bandar-Abbas Islamic Azad University.

Since 1996 to 2002, he worked as an academic member of the Iranian Archaeological Research Centre at the Cultural Heritage Organization of Iran (ICHO) - and as a forensic anthropologist he participated in seventeen archaeological excavations around Iran.[2]

At the same time as the founder and head of The National Museum of Medical Sciences History (Iran), he established the first medical museum in the country and the largest one in the Middle East. In 2003 he completed an MSc degree in Archaeology (2002–2003) at the Department of Biomolecular Sciences; University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology and in October 2003 he started a PhD in the field of biological anthropology/human population genetics at the University of Cambridge. He has published various books and papers on his research. In his current research he is using genetic tools to investigate the maternal and paternal history of the Iranian ethnic groups, and also the emergence of first farmers in the Iranian Plateau (eastern parts of the Fertile Crescent) and the origin of Aryans (Indo-Iranians) and Indo-Aryan race theory.