Researcher

Dr Nona Farbehi

Fields of Research (FoR)

Microfluidics and nanofluidics, Regenerative medicine (incl. stem cells), Bioinformatics and computational biology, Biomaterials, Cardiology (incl. cardiovascular diseases)

Biography

Dr Nona Farbehi is a lecturer at the Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering and an honorary visiting scientist at the Garvan Institute. She completed her doctoral degree in Prof Richard Harvey’s lab at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute and Prof Robert Nordon’s lab at UNSW, supported by IPRS Scholarship and Stem Cells Australia (SCA). After finishing her PhD, she was involved in establishing a state-of-the-art single-cell...view more

Dr Nona Farbehi is a lecturer at the Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering and an honorary visiting scientist at the Garvan Institute. She completed her doctoral degree in Prof Richard Harvey’s lab at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute and Prof Robert Nordon’s lab at UNSW, supported by IPRS Scholarship and Stem Cells Australia (SCA). After finishing her PhD, she was involved in establishing a state-of-the-art single-cell genomic centre, the so-called Garvan Weisman Centre for Cellular Genomic (GWCCG), to provide single-cell multi-omic platforms to all scientists nationally and internationally. She started her post-doc career in Prof Joseph Powell’s group in 2020, focusing on population-scale stem cell technology to understand how common DNA variation shapes cellular phenotypes before joining UNSW in 2022. Her interdisciplinary field of research involved using large-scale single-cell transcriptomic analysis of various cell types in health and disease, applying different technologies and bioinformatics tools, and designing and fabricating novel biomaterials and microfluidics systems.


My Grants

  • CI in UNSW Faculty of Engineering Infrastructure Fund ‘Mechanical testing equipment for soft and anisotropic materials’, $270K, 2023
  • CI in NSW Health Cardiovascular Research Capacity Program Collaborative Grants - ‘Engineering next generation aortic valve replacement materials’, $950K, 2023-2024
  • AI in NHMRC ID2000615, ‘Crossing a frontier in cardiac fibrosis: a single-cell multiomics approach to understanding fibroblast agency in models of heart’, 2020

 


My Qualifications

Jul 2020 – Sep 2022                      Post-doctoral Fellow

                                                       Prof. Powell's lab, GWCCG, Garvan Institute, Sydney, Australia

Mar 2014 – Jul 2018                      Doctor of Philosophy (Biomedical Engineering)

                                                       Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering (GSBME), UNSW and VCCRI, Sydney, Australia                              

Feb 2009 – May 2011                    Master of Science in Biomedical Engineering 

                                                       Amir Kabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran                                                          

Sep 2004 – Feb 2009                    Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Engineering (First Class Honours)

                                                       Research and science branch of Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran        


My Awards

  • University of New South Wales International Postgraduate Research Scholarship, Sydney, Australia, 2014-2017.
  • ASSCR & NSCFA travel award, Lorne, Australia, 2014
  • ASSCR & NSCFA travel award, Hunter Valley, Australia, 2015
  • UNSW Student Travel Scholarship, Keystone Conference, Snowbird, USA, 2016
  • The 17th Victor Chang International Symposium, best PhD poster award-Third place, Sydney, Australia, 2016
  • ASSCR meeting, student travel award, Pert, Australia, 2016
  • Stem Cells Australia (SCA) Retreat, best poster prize and free registration of ASSCR 2018, Gold Coast, Australia, 2017.
  • 25th St Vincent’s Research Symposium, The runner-up poster prize, Sydney, Australia, 2017
  • ASSCR/AGCTS annual meeting, student travel award, Sydney, Australia, 2017
  • Sydney Cardiovascular Symposium, best poster prize (& flash talk), Sydney, Australia, 2017
  • ASSCR & NSCFA, travel award, Melbourne, Australia, 2018.
  • Nominated for Malcolm Chaikin Prize as the best PhD thesis in Biomedical engineering graduate research school at UNSW, 2018.
  • ASSCR/AGCTS annual meeting, travel award, Melbourne, Australia, 2022

My Research Activities

  • Biomedical Engineering

  • Regenerative Medicine (Stem Cells and Tissue Engineering)

  • Microfluidic Devices

  • Cardiac disease

  • Single cell genomics

  • CRISPR interference and Perturb-seq

  • Biomaterials

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Location

BABS, E26 Level 1 UNSW Sydney NSW 2052 AUSTRALIA