Vita

Zahra Bagheri joined the research area “Arms Control and Emerging Technologies” at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg (IFSH) in 2024. In addition, she has been working on the German Federal Foreign Office-funded project “Muons for Peace”. Before her time at the IFSH, Zahra Bagheri studied physics in Iran and worked as a researcher at the Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM). Since then, she has been working on her PhD in the “Nuclear Verification and Disarmament” research group at the University of Hamburg’s Institute for Experimental Physics and exploring muon tomography as a novel verification approach.

Research Profile | Current Projects

In her research, Zahra Bagheri focuses on interdisciplinary issues in the field of nuclear arms control and disarmament. She is exploring a method of preventing cheating in nuclear warhead authentication measurements: a new, innovative way of verifying the absence of fissile material using cosmic-ray-induced particles (muons). In addition, she works on developing solutions using methods from the field of physics and deals in particular with the topics of nuclear verification and the authentication of nuclear weapons, analysing here the potential weaknesses of existing processes. The core of her research is dedicated to approximation, inverse problems and the Monte Carlo method, and she is developing new functionalities for the particle transport code GEANT4. Her research relies on conducting simulations in order to investigate nuclear weapon-related fissile material verification approaches.

Selected Publications

  • Davoudifar, Pantea, Keihanak Rowshan Tabari, Amir Abbas Eslami Shafigh, Ali Ajabshirizadeh, Zahra Bagheri, Fakhredin Akbarian Tork Abad, Milad Shayan. 2021.
    Development of a Local Empirical Model of Ionospheric Total Electron Content (TEC) and Its Application for Studying Solar-Ionospheric Effects.
    Scientific Reports 11: Article 15070. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-93496-y.
  • Bagheri, Zahra. 2020.
    Determination of Local Muon Flux Using Astronomical Charge Coupled Device.
    Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics 47: Article 035204. DOI: 10.1088/1361-6471/ab50c9.
  • Bagheri, Zahra, Pantea Davoudifar, Gohar Rastegarzadeh, Milad Shayan. 2017.
    Application of CORSIKA Simulation Code to Study Lateral and Longitudinal Distribution of Fluorescence Light in Cosmic Ray Extensive Air Showers.
    Journal of Astrophysics and Astronomy 38: Article 4. DOI: 10.1007/s12036-017-9424-2.
  • Shayan, Milad, Pantea Davoudifar, Zahra Bagheri. 2017.
    The Study of Variations of Low Energy Cosmic Helium’s Flux (up to 6 MeV) Due to Solar Activity.
    Advances in Space Research 59 (8): 2186-2191. DOI: 10.1016/j.asr.2017.01.035.