Ata is a PhD student at the University of Toronto, the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (IHPST). His primary interests include science and technology studies (STS) and the history of technology, particularly around the issues of race, gender, and nationalism in the 20th-century Middle East. In his doctoral studies, he is interested in examining the emergence of multiple forms of technological fear in the 20th century Iran, specifically, the causes and effects of anxieties of the nuclear power during the Cold War. He wishes to pursue the global and postcolonial roots of technophobia which has left fundamental footprints on science, literature, and public culture.
Ata earned his MA from the STS program at UBC-Vancouver writing on the idea of “Islamic technoscience” framing some technological dimensions of the state making project of the Islamic Republic state in the aftermath of the 1979 revolution in Iran.