Zahra Mahmoudpour

Zahra Mahmoudpour was from Najafabad in Isfahan Province. She earned her bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Isfahan University of Technology (class of 2018) and was later admitted to the master's program in electrical engineering at Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic) after ranking 146th in the national master's entrance exam. A classmate remembered her as a bright, hardworking student full of hope for the future.

On the evening of Thursday 18 Dey 1404 (8 January 2026), during the protests in Najafabad, she was shot with live ammunition by security forces in front of Police Station No. 12 and killed. Hengaw Organization for Human Rights reported that she was shot directly in the face; other accounts say the bullet struck her from behind, in the back of the head. Hengaw listed her among nine university students whose killings raised the confirmed student death toll to 25, including Danial Diyani.

Amirkabir University later publicly acknowledged that one of its master's students had died, describing it only as a death "in the recent unrest." Her fellow students in the electrical engineering department gathered in silence around her portrait to honor her memory.