Three post-doctoral fellows have been awarded 4 What Matters Foundation UBC Diabetes Fellowships from the Faculty of Medicine.
The Fellowships provide one-year of salary support for exceptional post-doctoral fellows to train in diabetes research in a UBC-based laboratory. The Fellowship is made possible by a generous donation from the 4 What Matters Foundation.
The 4 What Matters Foundation UBC Diabetes Fellows are:
Omid Vahidi
Dr. Vahidi is a research fellow at the Michael Smith Laboratories in the Piret Lab with James Piret, a Professor in the Department of Chemical & Biological Engineering (Faculty of Applied Science). He is working on an islet cell encapsulation project for transplantation in type I diabetic mice.
Dr. Vahidi received his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Tehran and his master’s degree in process modeling, simulation and control from the Sharif University of Technology. While completing his PhD at UBC, he developed a mathematical model of glucose metabolism for the assessment of type II diabetes mellitus. The model helps to reduce the long term complications of the disease by providing insightful information for administering reliable and effective medical treatments for the patients.
Omid Vahidi
Anne Pesenacker
Dr. Pesenacker is a post-doctoral fellow at the Child & Family Research Institute in the Levings Lab with Megan Levings, an Associate Professor in the Department of Surgery. She is studying T regulatory (Treg) cell subsets and functions in type I diabetes.
Dr. Pesenacker completed her doctoral studies in Prof. Lucy Wedderburn’s laboratory at the Institute of Child Health at the University College London (UK). Her project involved studying the cellular immunology of T regulatory cells in human health and childhood arthritis, focusing on genes and mechanisms involved in regulating disease severity of juvenile idiopathic arthritis and on cytokine-producing Treg cells. Dr. Pesenacker defined a small, but distinct, subpopulation of Treg cells defined by CD161 expression that produced pro-inflammatory cytokines, resulting in a first author publication in Blood in 2013.
Anne Pesenacker
Sandra Pereira
Dr. Pereira is a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Cellular & Physiological Sciences.