ANN ARBOR, MI - Hamed Razavi was looking forward to a return trip to the United States to receive recognition for the research he had spent the better part of five years working on at the University of Michigan.

Razavi, an Iranian student who had been a doctoral student in Interdisciplinary Mathematics at UM since 2010, was this year's recipient of the Sumner Myers Award, which is awarded by UM and given to a student who excels in the study of mathematical analysis.

He had intended to present his doctoral thesis and officially receive the award sometime in March or April, but those plans were halted after President Donald Trump's announcement of an executive order, which paused the United States' entire refugee program for four months, indefinitely bans all refugees from Syria and temporarily freezes immigration from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.

Although a temporary suspension of the ban was announced on Feb. 4, Razavi said he is still unsure if his visa application is going to be processed again.

"Imagine you have lived in a country for more than five years, you went to school there and have a lot of good memories," he said in an email. "You are invited to go back and stay for a couple of days to present your research and receive an award for the work for which you spent five years of your life. How would you feel if you are told are not allowed to go back to your university? I was saddened when I learned about the travel ban, but there was not much I could do about it."

According to the Associated Press, three judges on the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will decide as soon as Thursday whether to immediately reinstate Trump's travel ban, which temporarily suspended the nation's refugee program and immigration from seven mostly Muslim countries that have raised terrorism concerns.

Hamed Razavi, an Iranian student who had been a doctoral student in Interdisciplinary Mathematics at UM since 2010, was this year's recipient of the Sumner Myers Award, which is awarded by UM and given to a student who excels in the study of mathematical analysis. With the status of a recent executive order issued by President Donald Trump banning travel to seven Middle Eastern countries up in the air, Razavi will likely not be able to attend a ceremony to accept the award at UM.

Razavi applied for his U.S. visa on Jan. 25 - a couple of days before Trump's executive order. His application process was suspended after the travel ban was announced.

"Since, for Iranians, acquiring visa takes at least 4 to 6 weeks (on) average, and at anytime during this period the travel ban may be put back again, the whole situation is unclear now," he said in an email.

Razavi currently works at the biorobotics laboratory of Ecole Polytechinque Federal de Lausanne in Switzerland, where he continues to research on human-robot interactions for collaborative tasks.

At this point, UM is looking into the possibility of live broadcasting Razavi's talk and acceptance of the award from Lausanne, Switzerland.

UM mathematics professor Karen Smith is advocating for Razavi to be able to travel to the United States to accept the award.

Smith said the ban's negative impact has extended beyond Razavi, more directly impacting international students and post-doctorate candidates at UM.

"Razavi already has a prestigious post-doctoral position in Switzerland, and will no doubt be offered a position elsewhere in European industry or academics when that ends," Smith said in an email. "Sadly, (United States) universities will not be able to compete for talent like this anymore, either because of a direct ban, or because of the anti-immigrant and anti-science atmosphere the ban represents, even for citizens of countries not directly affected."

Razavi admitted he has not been impacted as directly as some of the 112 UM students from the seven countries included in Trump's executive order, 109 of those students were from Iran, according to fall 2016 enrollment figures.

"I see many Iranian scholars and scientists in situations worse than mine, (including) many newly admitted graduate students who invested a lot of time and energy to get into a good university in the US, and now with one order in one night they see all their dreams are destroyed," Razavi said. "I do not think this is beneficial for the interests of the U.S. either."