Ali obtained his BSc in Mathematics from Sharif University of Technology in Iran, and then completed his Master’s degree in the Master Parisien de Recherche en Informatique (MPRI) in France as a PhD-track student at Institut Polytechnique de Paris. He is currently working under the supervision of Peter Brown and Cambyse Rouzé on sum-of-squares hierarchies for quantum Hamiltonian problems. Roughly speaking, his current research interest is in studying quantum counterparts of graph problems using tools from optimization and quantum information theory. During his master’s studies, he also worked on topics in quantum information theory (entanglement criteria based on positive maps; quantum state discrimination) and graphical languages (graphical symplectic algebra and qupit stabiliser ZX-calculus).