Mohieddin Jafari earned a Ph.D. in Applied Proteomics in 2013 from the Beheshti University of Medical Sciences under the supervision of Professor Mehdi Sadeghi. During his predoctoral studies (2011) at the Proteomics Resource at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), he concentrated on protein fractionation in mass spectrometry-based proteome profiling under the supervision of Professor Alexander Ivanov. In 2015, he graduated from the Systems Biology Specialization Certificate program at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where he focused on network biology applications employing high-throughput data mining and network analysis tools. In 2018, he began working as a senior researcher at the University of Helsinki, following 1+3 years as a postdoc and PI at the Pasteur Institute of Iran. He began his career at FIMM for one year before joining the ONCOSYS Research Program Unit, Dept. of Pharmacology, and Clinical Proteomics Core Facility, for more than three years. In 2020, he obtained his Docentship in Bioinformatics from Helsinki University. In 2023, Dr. Jafari launched his independent career as a principal investigator (PI) in the Systems Pharmacology Research Group, Department of Biochemistry and Developmental Biology.
Mohieddin believes that research should be a lot of fun! That means digging into cool experiments in a laid-back work environment. When it comes to crunch time, we buckle down, but we also believe in maintaining a healthy work-life balance. Every member of the team is crucial, and we're on a mission to learn something new every day!
email: mohieddin.jafari@helsinki.fi
tel: +358 40 545 8989
Elham is a doctoral researcher whose main focus is on exploring protein–drug, protein–metabolite, and protein-protein interactions. She received her BSc degree in cellular and molecular biology, completed her M.Sc. in clinical biochemistry at Semnan University of Medical Sciences in 2020, and joined Dr. Jafari’s research group in 2021 to pursue her PhD. During her master's, she focused on drug target interaction and mechanism of action identification using a high-throughput proteomic technique. Currently, she is developing this proteomic technique into combination therapy for acute myeloid leukemia.
Research interests: cancer research, molecular systems biology, proteomics, mass spectrometry, bioinformatics, and drug combination analysis.
Email: elham.gholizadeh@helisnki.fi
Ehsan earned his Ph.D. in bioinformatics from the University of Tehran in 2024, majoring in Cancer Synthetic Lethality (SL) pair prediction. He contributed to the discipline by developing a constraint-based metabolism modeling pipeline to anticipate metabolic SL pairings during his dissertation studies. Since 2017, Ehsan has promoted bioinformatics, systems biology, and metabolic modeling understanding. He ran workshops on Telegram and Instagram under the BioUT channel to educate and engage interested parties. Ehsan taught bioinformatics to master's students at Tehran University of Medical Sciences and Shahed University. His expertise in web application development, data visualization, and scientific illustration simplifies complex subjects for a wider audience. Ehsan moved to Finland in 2023 to become a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki. His computational and experimental drug combination prediction research advances this important field.
Email: ehsan.zangene@helsinki.fi
Uladzislau earned his M.Sc. in Molecular Biology at the University of Debrecen (Hungary) in 2019. Besides academic experience, Uladzislau contributed to the preclinical studies of gene therapies at Biocad from 2019 to 2022. Having worked at the Proteomics Core Facility, he has developed a strong interest in proteomics and bioinformatics. In our lab, Uladzislau will apply his experience in wet lab and dry lab biology to find safer drug combinations for acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Particularly, he is interested in understanding the mechanism of the drug combination effect by utilizing proteomics and systems pharmacology for target deconvolution.
Salma Ibourki, MSc student
Salma, an exchange student from the University of Lille with a background in cellular biology and physiology, completed her Erasmus internship from April to August. During this time, she contributed to the DORSSAA project and AML drug target discovery.
Nicole Sundell, Medical student
Nicole, a former summer intern in my lab, contributed to zebrafish xenograft modeling and imaging in AML, as well as literature reviews during her internship, enhancing her research and pharmacology expertise.
Rashwita Gyanwali, MSc
Rashwita, a former summer intern in my lab, made contributions to projects related to drug response analysis and protein-based experiments, further enhancing her understanding of computational models in research.
Mehdi Mirzaie, Ph.D.
Mehdi, a former Senior Postdoctoral Researcher in my lab, played a key role in advancing our research on drug combination prediction, showcasing his expertise in computational models within the field.