Niloufar Shiri (b.1992), composer, Kamancheh player, and improviser is a graduate of the Tehran Music Conservatory where she closely worked with Maestro Saeed Farajpouri on Kamancheh Performance. Niloufar received her bachelor with honor in composition from the University of California, San Diego where she studied composition with Professors Lei Liang, Katherina Rosenberger, and improvisation with Mark Dresser. In conjunction with her studies at UC San Diego, she has also been directly studying and researching Persian Classical Music with Maestro Hossein Omoumi, a Professor at the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at UC Irvine since 2010. In 2012, the research received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Currently, she is pursuing her Ph.D. in integrated composition, Improvisation, and Technology (ICIT) at University of California, Irvine where she has been awarded provost Ph.D. fellowship from the Claire Trevor School of the Arts as well as a UC Irvine Diversity Recruitment Fellowship.