Trainees

Mehdi Shafa
University of Calgary
PhD Candidate    
Email: mshafa@ucalgary.ca

Born 22 September 1972, Semnan, Iran, Mehdi received his MSc degree in biology (Genetics) in 2001 from Shahid Beheshti university, Tehran, Iran.  He was a top student during his BSc and MSc degree. Working as a biologist/research assistant at the Department of Medical Genetics in Iran National Institute of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (NIGEB) for more than 5 years, he was responsible for setting up diagnosis protocols for new human genetic diseases and looking for new mutations. Mehdi was also conducting molecular and biochemical studies to investigate human genetic diseases especially mitochondrial defects. He was involved in several national projects including genome diversity, phylogeny and phylogeography of different Persian ethnicities. He had responsibility of sequencing at NIGEB from 2002 to 2007 and was supervisor of Medical Genetic Department Lab from 2004 until 2005. He was also working as a part-time technical sales specialist for GE Healthcare (Formerly, Amersham Biosciences) for about 7 years. Mehdi is the author and co-author of more than 30 scientific publications. He was awarded for his scientific publications by NIGEB in 2007. Outside the lab, Mehdi spends time reading books/scientific papers, watching movies and searching Internet.