My name is Rouholla[h] and it means The Spirit of God (the h at the end is almost not pronounced.) I've been born in Tehran, the capital of Iran. I received my high school diploma in physics and mathematics discipline from The Tehran Allameh-Helli NODET high school, in 1997 with a GPA of 19.13 out of 20.00. I got my BS degree in Civil Engineering from Sharif University of Technology (former Arya-Mehr University of Technology, which is virtually the best engineering school in the nation) in 2001 with the highest honor. I was the first student in the Iranian national MS entrance scientific competition among more than 11,000 students across the country; subsequently I got an MS degree in Structural Mechanics major at the same university in 2003 with honors. My MS thesis topic was "Computational modeling of elasto-plastic behavior in large deformations using Element-Free Galerkin Method" with Dr. Amir R. Khoei. I've been admitted to the TAM Department at UIUC and I'm studying towards my PhD degree in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics since then.