RV — Reza Vahdatparast, homeReza Vahdatparast

02 · About

The long way to the workshop

Materials first, then machines, then models — and eventually a country change. The story, in order.

Story

I started in materials, not machines: an associate degree in metallurgy at the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, and research-assistant years in university and industry laboratories. Metallurgy leaves you with a permanent habit — you never quite stop asking what a part is made of before asking what it does.

The drawing office came next: three years as a design engineer in oil and gas, learning CAD craft the honest way — drawings that fitters had to build from, and installations that showed you every mistake at full scale.

Then Datis, and nearly a decade compressed into six years. I joined part-time on CFD and FEA, became the CAE engineer, and ended as the senior mechanical engineer leading multidisciplinary R&D projects across industrial equipment and advanced manufacturing. I completed my mechanical engineering degree at the same time, evenings against deadlines. Industry first, degree second: the reverse of the usual order, and I'd defend it.

Inside those years sit the dossiers this site is built around — the furnace with no drawings, the micro gas turbine, the coating machinery. I also supported and mentored early-career engineers and university students in engineering analysis.

In parallel ran the invention — SPPE and its patent — alongside international invention-fair awards; and eventually a startup, Greenie Positive, whose international startup programmes brought me to the United Kingdom in late 2022.

The UK chapter began the way immigrant engineering careers actually begin: bespoke automation machinery with a specialist technology firm, then laboratory furnaces at Verder Scientific's Carbolite Gero — an industrial-furnace lineage that felt like coming home.

My work since 2024 continues in industrial research and development; those roles appear in the timeline below.

Member of the IET, working toward Chartered Engineer registration. I document my own career the way I document machines — versioned, reviewed, and honest about what I've done and where I'm heading.

A workshop scene from the Datis years: the vacuum furnace vessel with its ducting and auxiliary equipment on an elevated platform.
Fig. 1 — The workshop where much of this story happened.

Timeline