Alireza Farrokhi is the Head of Conservation and Construction Services with Alberta Culture and Status of Women, responsible for heritage conservation and environmental management of provincially-owned designated historic resources. This includes more than 300 historic structures and assemblies at 23 historic sites including three industrial heritage sites. The Turner Valley Gas Plant, Bitumount, and the Greenhill Mine site contain natural features and industrial remains embodying early oil and natural gas, oil sands, and coal extraction activities in Alberta and are protected as Provincial Historic Resources due to their outstanding historic significance as birthplaces of Alberta’s energy industry.

Alireza has always been a strong advocate for heritage education. He has been instrumental in building capacity in the heritage filed partly through his work with several educational institutions, bringing neighboring discipline communities together to spark collaborative research, providing opportunities for faculty and research groups, and by underlining real-world problems and mentoring student cohorts to reach practical solutions founded on academic rigor. 

An example of success in such collaborative work is the partnership between the Government of Alberta and Athabasca University’s Heritage Resources Management Program for the development of four graduate-level heritage resources management courses that support and promote heritage conservation education. Alireza had a leading role by securing funding for the initiative through Government of Alberta’s Innovation Fund, by identifying areas of need and providing input into course content and material, and by assisting with the delivery of in-person component of the courses. 

Alireza holds a B.Sc. degree in Civil Engineering and an M.Sc. degree in Heritage conservation. For his PhD research, he focused on heritage documentation technologies and their impact on heritage conservation management.