Iman Tavassoly

Graduate Student (GBCB Program) Department of Biological Sciences Virginia Tech Blacksburg, VA 24061-0406 Email: tavassoly@vt.edu Tel: 540-231-1448 Fax: 540-231-9307 Research Pages: Tyson Lab

Current Research Interests

My research interests include systems biology of complex diseases, oncology and cancer biology and development of quantitative experimental methods for systems biology. My current research focuses on dynamical model of autophagy and its interplay with apoptosis in cancer cells. I have built a mathematical model for autophagy and I have been working on the development of quantitative methods to detect dynamical aspects of autophagic response in cancer cells.

Education

MD 1999-2007 Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences, IRAN.
Diploma 1995-1999 Mathematics and Biology, National Organization for Development of the Exceptional Talents (NODET), Shiraz, IRAN.

Professional Experiences

Jun 2011-Jan 2012 Visiting Graduate Student Georgetown University Medical Center
Spring 2011 Pharmaceutical Bioinformatics Course Uppsala University, Sweden
May 2011 Quantitative Fluorescence Microscopy Training Course Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory
Spring 2011 PhosphoFlow/Immune Monitoring Training Course Stanford University
Dec 2010-Jan 2011 Visiting Graduate Student Department of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School
May - Aug 2010 Visiting Graduate Student Georgetown University Medical Center
2007-2008 Family Physician Iran
Summer 2006 International Summer School of Oncology The University Medical Center Groningen, The Netherlands
Jun 2005 ISCOMS Research Fellow The University Medical Center Groningen, The Netherlands
Jun 2005 Workshop Organizer (Chaos and Fractals in Biological Systems) ISCOMS, Groningen University Medical Center, The Netherlands

Publications

Clarke. R., Cook, K.L., Hu, R., Facey, C.O., Tavassoly, I., Schwartz, J.L., Baumann, W.T., Tyson, J.J., Xuan, J., Wang, Y., Wärri, A., and Shajahan, A.N. (2012). Endoplastic reticulum stress, the unfolded protein response, autophagy and the integrated regulation of breast cancer cell fate. Cancer Res. 72:1321-1331.
[Abstract]
Clarke, R., Shajahan, A.N., Wang, Y., Tyson, J.J., Riggins, R.B., Weiner, L.M., Baumann, W.T., Xuan, J., Zhang, B., Facey, C.,Aiyer, H., Cook, K., Hickman, F. E.,Tavassoly, I., Verdugo, A., Chen, C., Zwart, A., Warri, A., and Hilakivi-Clarke, L. A. (2011). Endoplasmic reticulum stress, the unfolded protein response, and gene network modeling in antiestrogen resistant breast cancer. Hormone Mol. Biol. Clin. Invest 5: 35-44.
[Abstract]
Tyson, J.J., Baumann, W.T., Chen, C., Verdugo, A., Tavassoly, I., Wang, Y., Weiner, L.M., and Clarke, R. (2011). Dynamic modelling of eostrogen signalling and cell fate in breast cancer cells. Nat. Rev. Cancer 11: 523-532.
[Abstract] [Article]

Personal

Iman is from Shiraz, Iran. He joined GBCB program in 2009 after receiving a Transdisciplinary Team Science Fellowship from Virginia Bioinformatics Institute and he was selected as Virginia Tech Outstanding Interdisciplinary Doctoral Student in 2012. Besides science and medicine, he works in different aspects of the arts including photography. He graduated from Iranian Youth Cinema Society (IYCS) in independent film-making and professional photography in 2004. His photos have been published in New England Journal of Medicine and Photojournalism Blog of The New York Times (A Visual Time Capsule Project). He has been awarded two times in Virginia Tech photography contests. In his free time he plays flute and does painting. He has been a freelance poet and blogger for more than 10 years. He is interested in philosophy and psychology and his recent studies have been on philosophy of language, Jungian Psychology and Rumi’s mystical poetries.

For his CV and details of his research activities, please visit his Personal Home Page.