Behzad Mortazavi was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1969. He received the License and Maitrise degrees in marine ecology from Université de P. & M. Curie, Paris, France, in 1992, and the Ph.D. degree in biological oceanography from The Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA, in 1998. From 1998 to 2007, he was an Assistant and Associate Research Scientist with Florida State University. Since 2008, he has been a Faculty with the Departmental of Biological Sciences, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA, and is currently the Chair of the Department. He was a Program Officer with the Directorate of Biological Sciences at the National Science Foundation during 2014–2015. He has published more than 48 articles. His work has been funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, and The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI). His research interests include biogeochemistry and use of stable isotopes to trace the transformation of nitrogen and carbon in the biosphere. Since the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, he has been investigating the impact of the spill on saltmarsh biogeochemistry.