About Me

My name is Mr. Mehdi Ghaemian. I’m Iranian and was born in 1966 in Rasht of Gillan province. I studied Plant Protection in Urmia University in Iran and graduated in June 1993. Few month before my graduation, the faculty bought 3 desktop computer for its postgraduate students and I request and persisted to be allowed to work with one of them. To get this acceptance, I promised to our chancellor to develop a software application for estimating possibility of being a child poisoned accidentally! This calculation was based on an article which he gave me. The interesting and dangerous point was that I did know nothing about computer software programming!! My main idea for working with PC was to create an application for insect key identification as it was very hard for me to memorize them and remembering scientific name. Anyway, I started developing computer software with Quick Basic. I had just 3 month to learn Quick Basic, developing an Insect Key identification (my interest) and having my promise because I had to graduate in 3 months and had not access to any PC. Remember at that time it was no Windows and only MS-Dos. I had to work very hard and sometime I seated in front of PC for 17 hours nonstop. Pure non stop, without any breakfast, lunch of even a drink like a cup of tea! And I did…
I learned enough  Quick Basic to finish Children poisoning project but could never finish insect key identification in full. Just few important order up to some sub families. The point was that I realized the developing software is what I was looking for. If computer developed sooner there was no doubt that I studying in software engineering. But somehow I was lucky.
Will tell you why in following sentences.
2-3 months after my graduation, I started to work in Plant Protection Organization of Iran. I mean in the headquarter in Tehran. My post was locust officer and my duty was to record control area treatment against all type of locust in the country. Although the post was exactly what I studied in the university but I need to have some experience in the field so I went to Chabahar in south east of Iran, where was famous as Desert Locust habitat. I stayed there for 45 days and during the day I had survey operation to find Desert Locust and get familiar with its habitat and behaviour. It was very pleasant time I had there in Sistan and Baluchistan province. This caused that I visited the area every month not only because it was my duty but also I like the job, people and environment.
In 6 months after I started to work in PPO, I had this opportunity to go to FAO HQ in Rome for a short training course on Desert Locust. During the course, I understood that it is not enough to  be an entomologist to manage a pest. There are many other factors there and many other knowledges that a plant protection expert need to know like meteorology, geography and …. Computer.
After the course, I understood that there is something else that I like… Map!! I liked to look at a map for hours. Looking every details on the map was and still is one of my hobbies.
I decided to do my job as a recorder of locust control operation more technical. Instead of writing down control operation data in a notebook, I decided to input data on a PC. So, I tried to learn what data is important to record and how to record them on a PC. Computer Database. It was Paradox database at that time that was available and I could use. Although I did not know to program it but fortunately I could learn how to script for that and programmed the first practical computer application which could record control operation data as far as locust pest and could get very good reports from it. My boss always was surprised of my exact, well categorized  and immediate reports and even based of any time period the he wanted. He could never understand that a computer application can make jobs easier. I was happy for 2 years until a morning when I reached my office and turn on my PC and faced with a strange blackish screen. My PC was affected by a computer virus. I had no backup. Even no backup of my source code. I lost everything. 2 years of data and most important, the source code of my first custom application.
I confess that it was very bad time. But I started again. I developed the application again inout that 2 years data again in the application. This time with many floppy disk anywhere as backups.
During these years I had this opportunity to meet some international, well educated and nice experts that helped me to have better thought as far as my work. Moreover, I had this opportunity to continue my education as post graduate in Imperial Collage of London University in Pest Management, fellowshipped by FAO. I finished it in 2003 and back to work. I realized that just recording control operation data can not help me or others for forecasting or managing a pest. I had to record many other factors related to pest, one of them is location. Yes, geographical location. I tried to have digital map in my application, even I tried with QBasic without any success. So I tried to find another better and more powerful programming language. I choose Delphi. Don’t remember exact reason but remember I started with Delphi version 5 and work with it until version 7. I developed eLocust2Mapper with Delphi which was interested by Desert Locust Information Service of FAO. It was my first international computer application which were using by other people. Very exiting.
It was started of my professional software computer programmer. I developed many application for Iranian all about pests and pesticides. Even developed mobile application for pest management and data collecting in the field. Non of them were general application which can be sold in the market and all were professional ones by order.
Another milestone happened to me. I could have a contract with FAO to develop an application for managing Desert Locust data called RAMSES. It was an old application developed by other and I was asked to develop a new version of it. I started to develop version 4.x of it. It was real GIS application I can call and I used OpenJUMP (link) as GIS engine and PostGreSQL as Database engine using Java. All new for me. After Delphi, I had some experience with C# and one of my application developed by it. By now I had to learn Java then OJ and PG!!! Very hard time but interesting. I do remember for understand OJ which was (or is, don’t know) an open source, I rewrite it 2 times by myself to understand it. Too much energetic.
Anyway, RAMSES version 4 developed and very soon its 4.1 version released and used by Desert Locust countries for many years.
As far as my official job, I become master trainer and trained many experts at national, regional and international levels. Moreover, I promoted from locust survey officer to locust information officer, Head of Locust Management Group, Deputy of Public and Commons Pest management, Head of Public and Commons Pest management, Chief Technical Deputy Director for Plant Quarantine, Head of Plant Protection Organization for 3 months and finally retired from Governmental service in 2022.
Now I’m a freelancer with experiences in locust and quarantine pests management and computer software development knowing Delphi, C#, Java and Python.