Shabnam was born and grew up in Tehran, Iran and found her love for chemistry as a high school student. She received her B.S. degree in chemistry from the National University of Iran and M.S. degree in inorganic chemistry from Sharif University of Technology. In 2010, she joined the research group of Professor Ken Karlin at Johns Hopkins University and studied the biologically inspired coordination chemistry of heme/Cu synthetic systems with nitrogen oxides such as nitric oxide, nitrite, and hyponitrite.

After finishing her Ph.D. dissertation, in the Fall of 2015, she began a postdoctoral position in the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where she worked with Professor Jonas Peters on the electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide (CO₂) to carbon-based fuels. Shabnam then joined the research group of Professor Harry Gray as a postdoctoral fellow in the Spring of 2017. There, her research has focused on a mechanistic study of O₂ reactivity of blue Thermus thermophilus laccase.

In the Fall of 2018, Shabnam started her independent academic career at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG). Her research group is interested in biological and energy sciences from an inorganic chemistry perspective. Their research is targeted toward manipulation of a broad range of unique redox processes that take place within homogeneous photocatalysts, protein scaffolds, and electrochemical systems. In 2022, Shabnam received the Bernard Glickman Bernard-Glickman Dean’s Professorship at UNCG and was awarded the Arthur E. Martell Early Career Researcher Prize from the Journal of Coordination Chemistry. In her independent career, Shabnam has been recognized with an NSF Launching Early-Career Academic Pathways in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences (LEAPS-MPS) Award, an NIH Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA), and a 2023 DOE Early Career Award.

Go to the Hematian Research Group website to learn more.