Mohammad R. Aref  was born in city of Yazd in Iran in 1951. He received his B.Sc. in 1975 from University of Tehran , his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in 1976 and 1980, respectively, from  Stanford University , all in Electrical Engineering.

He returned to Iran in 1980 and was actively engaged in academic and political affairs. He was a faculty member of  Isfahan University of Technology  from 1982 to 1995; He has been a Professor of Electrical Engineering at  Sharif University of Technology  since 1995 and has published more than 290 technical papers in Communication and Information Theory and Cryptography in international journals and conferences proceedings.

At the same time, during his academic activities, he has been involved in different political positions .First Vice President of I.R.Iran, Vice President of  I.R.Iran  and Head of Management and Planing Organization, Minister of ICT of I.R.Iran and Chancellor of  University of Tehran  , are the most recent ones.