Mehdy Sedaghat Payam is currently a Graduate Assistant in the Department of English at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he focuses on Persian Digital Humanities at the Roshan Institute for Persian Studies. He previously served as an Assistant Professor of English Literature at SAMT Institute for Research and Development in the Humanities in Tehran from December 2015 to January 2019. Dr. Payam holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from Victoria University of Wellington, where he specialized in the materiality of media in Experimental Print Fiction and Electronic Literature. Dr. Payam’s research interests span academic writing, Persian Digital Humanities, computational literary studies, and electronic literature. He has published extensively, including articles on media-specific analysis of digital texts and metafictional implications in literature. His notable works include contributions to digital humanities such as developing Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) engines for Persian and Arabic scripts, enhancing access to Persian literary works and cultural heritage. In addition to his research, Dr. Payam has a robust teaching portfolio at the University of Maryland, including courses on digital studies, technical writing, global literature, and film form and culture. His significant contributions to the field have been recognized with several fellowships and awards, including from the Mellon Foundation and the Iranian Americans Academics and Professionals. Dr. Payam is an active member of the digital humanities community, serving as a reviewer for several journals and conferences.