Katayoon (Katie) Dehesh
Director, Institute for Integrative Genome Biology
Ernst and Helen Leibacher Endowed Chair
Professor of Molecular Biochemistry
University of California, RiversideCOURTESY OF KATAYOON DEHESHIn September 1980, just as the Iran-Iraq War was beginning, Katayoon Dehesh was an assistant professor at National University (now Shahid Beheshti University) in Tehran teaching biology. She had returned home to Iran from the United Kingdom in 1977 after receiving a PhD in plant biology, and aside from lecturing, Dehesh was participating in mandatory military service that barred her from leaving the country. She was also told that she couldn’t teach on religiously significant days, but Dehesh disregarded the order, continuing to hold her scheduled classes.
At the same time, Dehesh was making plans to join the lab of a professor in Germany who was working on salt tolerance in plants—the subject of her PhD thesis. All commercial flights were grounded because of the war, so a bus ticket was the only way out of the country. But these were booked up by other people wanting to leave Iran. Then, abruptly, all of the embassies in Iran closed, and no one could exit without a visa.
“Suddenly, there were many available bus tickets,” says Dehesh, now the director of the Institute for Integrative Genome Biology at the University of California, Riverside. “I packed a small suitcase and said goodbye to my mother, who was crying, and my father and sister, who ...
