Mehdi Vahdati was born in a small town in the southwest of Iran (not far from the Persian Gulf, see picture). He did his bachelor's and master's in polymer science and engineering at Amir Kabir University (Tehran Polytechnic). During this period, he worked as a research assistant on the thermomechanical behavior of thermoplastic blends and nanocomposites. His master's project was focused on the electrospinning of porous nanofibers from polymer blends.

Mehdi joined the Soft Matter Science and Engineering (SIMM) lab at ESPCI Paris and Sorbonne University in 2016 to do his Ph.D on stimuli-responsive soft underwater adhesives under the supervision of Costantino Creton and Dominique Hourdet. His Ph.D. was in the framework of a Marie Sklodowska-Curie consortium (BioSmart Trainee, EU Horizon 2020), which covered different aspects of adhesion on fouled, wet, and underwater surfaces. In 2018, he spent a few months as a visiting researcher in Marleen Kamperman's lab at Wageningen University and Research [where he worked on the synthesis and formulation of thermoresponsive complex coacervates; Marleen's lab is now at the University of Groningen] and in Ole Hassager's lab at Danish Technical University [where he studied the extensional rheology of thermoresponsive hydrogels].

In 2020, Mehdi joined the group of Jacques Lalevée at Mulhouse Materials Science Institute (IS2M) as a postdoctoral researcher to work on a biomedical technology in partnership with a startup company, COHESIVES. During this period, he developed and coupled novel mechanical and microscopic technics to study the interface of biological tissues and biomedical devices. In 2021, he joined the team of Fouzia Boulmedais at Institut Charles Sadron (ICS) in Strasbourg, where he started investigating biosourced complex coacervates. Mehdi co-supervised multiple master's and Ph.D. projects and contributed to the conceptualization and execution of several others during this time.

Since September 2022, Mehdi has been a Chaire de Professeur Junior [tenure track assistant professor] at the Physics and Engineering Department of the University of Strasbourg and Institut Charles Sadron (CNRS). In 2023, he was appointed the scientific manager of ICS rheology platform, Matte'Rheo. In parallel to his research, Mehdi teaches the following bachelor's and master's courses: introduction to polymer materials, rubber elasticity [part of M2 advanecd materials science],  fluid mechanics, and mathematical methods in physics. Mehdi has been serving as a co-coordinator of ITI HiFunMat graduate school since August 2024.