Dr. Pakpour joined UBC in 2018 as an Assistant Professor at the School of Engineering. She is a highly accomplished researcher with a track record of academic excellence during her PhD at UBC, followed by her Postdoctoral appointment at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Her fundamental research interest is to better comprehend forces and factors influencing the human microbiome, and how microorganisms interact with their environment, with each other, and with their host. Beside her core independent research, Dr. Pakpour has initiated and led a number of joint international projects. Currently, she is the microbiome research lead in the Nurse Engagement and Wellness Study (NEWS) as part of the Hoffman Program on Chemicals at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health as well as the lead of Human Virus Project at MIT Center for Microbiome Informatics and Therapeutics. Her background and broad expertise in microbiome science, omic technologies and advanced bioinformatics have allowed her to establish the Biomedical Microbiome Research (BMR) laboratory at UBC focusing on advancing microbiome science in health and disease.
Dr. Pakpour is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards from The Fonds de recherche du Québec – Nature et technologies (FRQNT), as well as Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC