Sepehr is Research Assistant on the LSE Middle East Centre project ‘Roads as Tools for (Dis)connecting Cities and Neighbourhoods: a Socio-Spatial Study of Abu Dhabi’. He is also a PhD candidate at the Space Syntax Laboratory, UCL, where he investigates how development policies intensify informal growth through applying machine learning. His main interest is in explaining patterns of urban growth in relation to aggregate social behaviour through spatial data science methods.

Trained as an architect in Iran and the UK, he has previously been a research associate at the University of Tehran, and has taught at UCL and Cardiff University. He has also practiced as a planner in informal settlements in the peripheries of Tehran, where he lead and developed micro upgrading projects with local communities.