Maziyar was born in Iran, lived in Canada and raised in Southern California. He is the younger of two neurosurgery residents in his family. He attended UCLA for his undergraduate education as a biochemistry major and worked in the lab of Dr. William A. Goddard III at Caltech during that time. He completed medical school here at Stanford University and concentrated his studies in the molecular basis of medicine, working with Dr. Michael Clarke on tumorigenic stem cells. Maziyar began residency in 2010 and has a wide array of interests in neurosurgery spanning skull base, spine and functional neurosurgery.