Marzieh Mirhashemi is a Research Scientist at the Sabeti lab working on developing diagnostics for respiratory viral detection using Cas-13a technologies. She completed a PhD-MS program in Clinical and Translational Science at Tufts university in 2014. She received her PhD in Infection Biology from University College Dublin, MSc in Biomedical Diagnostics from Dublin City University and BSc in Microbiology from Karaj Azad University. Her PhD thesis was focused on identification of the chief source(s) of Cryptosporidium in the environment, compiling a database of Cryptosporidium species and subtypes that occur in livestock, wildlife, environment and human population. She later joined the Irish Department of Agriculture to establish an Irish National Accreditation Board lab for the detection of Cryptosporidium oocysts in water, identify methods for genotyping Cryptosporidium in drinking water and to provide genotyping services to commercial primary testing laboratories and the Health Service Executive during outbreak investigation
She joined the Freedman lab at UMass Medical School as an AHA postdoctoral fellow focusing on identifying metabolic abnormalities in platelets as a result of obesity, and preclinical markers for heart failure utilizing data and samples from various clinical and cohort studies. In her spare time, Marzieh enjoys to engage in community educational programs. In collaboration with her friends, she established Bagche (a non-profit educational organization) to provide a space for Iranian-American children to reconnect with the culture of their parents through Persian language, poetry, philosophy and art.