Masoud Ghandehari is on the Faculty of Civil and Urban Engineering at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering and Head of the Urban Observatory at the Center for Urban Science and Progress. Prior to joining NYU, he held a research appointment at the National Science Foundation Center for Advanced Materials, and The Center for Quality Engineering and Failure Prevention. He began university studies at Columbia University followed with consulting practice in New York City where he worked on various large infrastructure renewal projects. He did his graduate work at McGill University and Northwestern University with a doctoral thesis in full field optical metrology for imaging damage localization.

His academic research has focused on the application of advanced instrumentation and data analysis targeting the aging, health and performance of physical systems. Through the application of sensing, observations and system assessment, he is developing methodologies that generate multi-scale data on physical, environmental and human systems. This work is aimed at developing novel approaches for understanding the condition, interdependencies, and well being of cities and its inhabitants.