Delaram Pouyabahar

Eric and Wendy Schmidt Postdoctoral FellowBroad Institute of MIT and Harvard

Hosted at the Wellcome Sanger Institute  ·  Based in Cambridge, UK

dpouyaba@broadinstitute.org  ·  dp31@sanger.ac.uk

Delaram headshot

Education

University of Toronto

Toronto, ON, Canada

Ph.D. in Computational Biology  ·  2019 – 2025

University of Tehran

Tehran, Iran

B.Sc. in Cell & Molecular Biology  ·  2014 – 2018

Academic Research Experience

Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Schmidt Center

Eric and Wendy Schmidt Postdoctoral Fellow  ·  Feb 2026 – Present  ·  Supervisor: Dr. Debbie Marks

  • Developing machine learning models to predict peptide-MHC binding to T cell receptors and downstream functional T cell activation, with applications to repertoire-level immunogenicity prediction and immune engineering.

Terrence Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research, University of Toronto

Toronto, ON, Canada

Postdoctoral Researcher  ·  May 2025 – Jan 2026  ·  Supervisor: Dr. Aleksandrina Goeva

  • Developing a machine learning method to identify spatially localized disease-associated cell states across multi-sample spatial transcriptomics datasets.

University of Toronto

Toronto, ON, Canada

Graduate Student Researcher  ·  Jan 2020 – April 2025  ·  Supervisor: Dr. Gary Bader

  • Developed computational frameworks to extract interpretable biological and technical signals from multi-sample single-cell datasets using statistical and machine learning approaches.
  • Designed a scalable linear mixed-effects model for group-based differential expression analysis in large-scale single-cell RNA-seq studies.
  • Built the first multi-strain single-cell atlas of the rat liver and performed inter-strain comparisons in a rat liver transplant model in collaboration with the MacParland Lab.

Sharif University of Technology

Tehran, Iran

Research Assistant  ·  July 2018 – August 2019  ·  Supervisor: Dr. Ali Sharifi-Zarchi

  • Investigated the genomic principles of small RNA sorting into exosomes using machine learning and deep learning approaches (in collaboration with the Goodarzi Lab, UCSF).
  • Analyzed ctDNA samples from breast cancer patients using variant calling pipelines to identify driver mutations and druggable targets.
  • Explored the statistical characteristics of ctDNA data to guide simulation tool development.

European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL)

Heidelberg, Germany

Visiting Research Intern  ·  June 2017 – September 2017  ·  Supervisor: Dr. Janosch Hennig

  • Investigated TRIM25 protein structure using NMR spectroscopy and X-ray crystallography.
  • Conducted protein expression and purification to support structure analysis.

University of Tehran

Tehran, Iran

Undergraduate Research Assistant  ·  March 2017 – July 2018  ·  Supervisor: Dr. Sayed Amir Marashi

  • Explored the relationship between metabolic gene co-expression and flux correlation in E. coli using microarray data and metabolic network sampling.

Industrial Research Experience

Biossil Inc.

Toronto, ON, Canada

Part-Time Research Scientist (Computational R&D)  ·  February 2024 – May 2024

  • Applied machine learning techniques to analyze omics and biomedical text data for drug repurposing initiatives.

Pardis Gene Technology Co.

Tehran, Iran

Part-Time Research Intern (Bioinformatics R&D)  ·  December 2018 – June 2019

  • Analyzed donor-derived cell-free DNA (cfDNA) from solid organ transplant patients to monitor graft health and enable earlier detection of acute rejection episodes.
  • Designed an individual identification SNP panel for the Iranian population based on the Iranome database.

Publications

* Equal contribution from authors.

Oral Presentations

Poster Presentations

Honors and Funding

Teaching Experience and Course Development

Course Instructor

Teaching Assistance

Mentorship & Service