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Alireza Rafieerad
Goethe-Universität, Germany
Alireza Rafieerad is a visiting research scientist in the Faculty of Biological Sciences at Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany and held a senior postdoctoral fellow position for over five years at the Canada-Italy biomaterials and tissue engineering lab at St Boniface Albrechtsen Research Centre, University of Manitoba, Canada. He is an awardee of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Seal-of-Excellence associated with the Horizon Europe 2023-24 program. His research interests are focused on designing advanced low-dimensional biomaterials, particularly carbon-based, for specific applications in nanomedicine and nano-agriculture towards immunomodulation. Over the past six to seven years, his research studies have actively contributed to advancing the field of Nano-Immunoengineering by exploring the impact of MXene biomaterials as a versatile and promising strategy for modulating targeted immune responses in diverse living biosystems. His postdoctoral research reported the first MXene-enabled approach for treating a long-standing inflammatory disease known as allograft vasculopathy caused by host immune responses post-organ transplantation. He has also been leading multiple projects on the design and application of MXenes for the rational engineering of plants' immune systems, aiming to biostimulate and boost their resistance against invasive phytopathogenic organisms, as well as to enhance their yields, quality, growth, and maturation under abiotic stress conditions. He has served as the Session Co-chair at the Biomaterials and Cardiovascular Research Symposium during the 41st North American Meeting of the International Society for Heart Research Advances and the 9th IACS 2022, held in Winnipeg. He has received several national/international awards, including Young Investigator, Best Publication, and the AHA Paul Dudley White International Scholar Award for the best abstract from Canada. He is the co-author and co-inventor of several MXene papers published in prominent Wiley and Elsevier journals, as well as back-to-back U.S patents; he continues to serve as an editorial board member and reviewer for interdisciplinary journals.