Gharib was born in
Tehran in 1952. His father, originally from
Garakan, held a bachelor's degree in communications engineering and worked in telegraph and telephone systems before establishing a private school to teach mathematics and English. His mother migrated from
Azerbaijan following the
Bolshevik Revolution and was a high school teacher in French. His parents were secular Muslims who emphasized education. As a child, Gharib redesigned the water circulation system of their family garden. As a teenager, he built small rockets and developed an interest in aeronautics. He earned his
Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from the
University of Tehran in 1976. He moved to the United States, obtaining a
Master of Science in mechanical and aerospace engineering from
Syracuse University in 1978, with a focus on fluid mechanics. He completed a
doctorate in aeronautics at the
Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at Caltech in 1983. His dissertation, supervised by
Anatol Roshko, centered on vortex dynamics in low-turbulence water tunnels using laser velocimetry techniques. ==Research==