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Maziar Ashrafian Bonab

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Dr. Maziar Ashrafian Bonab MD, MSc, PhD; born 20 September 1966 in Tehran; Iran) is an Iranian population geneticist/forensic scientist specialising in forensic genetics (the use of the DNA markers in the investigation of crimes). His groundbreaking research uses human DNA markers (mainly mtDNA and the Y chromosome) to identify the ancestral history of humans in both anthropological and forensic cases.

Bonab has published various books and papers on his research. Before doing his PhD in Cambridge, he first qualified and worked as a Medical Doctor (1984-1991) in Iran. After passing a course in forensic medicine at the Iranian Legal Medical Organization (2002), he was 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. He worked as a biological anthropologist at the Iranian Archaeological Research Centre at the Iranian cultural heritage organization (ICHO) - from 1996-2002)and he participated in seventeen archaeological excavations around Iran.^[1]

At the same time he was working as the founder and head of the [Iranian National Museum of Medical Sciences history]. He got a MSc degree in Biomolecular Archaeology (2002-2003) at the department of Biomolecular Sciences at UMIST (Manchester) and in October 2003 he started a PhD in the field of biological anthropology/human population genetics at the Cambridge University.

In his current research he is using genetic tools to investigate the maternal and paternal history of the Iranian population (Iranian Azerbaijan), 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.