Diversity in Life Sciences

Dr. Samira Asgari is an assistant professor of Genetics and Genomic Sciences at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.  She completed her M.Sc. studies at the University of Tehran, Iran (Hossein Baharvand’s lab), then moved to Lausanne, Switzerland to pursue a Ph.D. degree in human genomics of infectious disease at EPFL (Jacques Fellay’s lab) in 2012. In 2017, Dr. Asgari moved to Boston for her postdoctoral training in human statistical and population genomics at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital (Soumya Raychaudhuri’s lab).

Dr. Asgari started her research group at Mount Sinai in 2022.  Her group focuses on understanding the human genetic basis of infection and immunity.  The group’s research questions include: What are the human genetic variants underlying susceptibility and resistance to specific pathogens? What are the molecular mechanisms connecting these variants to cellular functions and immune responses? and How do differences in population history and demography play into susceptibility and resistance to specific pathogens?  Dr. Asgari’s lab uses a combination of statistical, functional, and population genomics methods to answer these questions.

In her spare time, Dr. Asgari loves to read, hike, and discover new cheeses to try!