Alumni feature: Dr. Leili Rohani

Dr. Leili Rohani aspires to change the world through stem cell research.

After completing her PhD in Molecular Medicine at the Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology IZI and the University of Leipzing in Germany, Rohani started her post-doctoral fellowship in Dr. Derrick Rancourt’s lab at the McCaig Institute for Bone and Joint Health.  She was drawn to research at the University of Calgary through her interest in combining biomedical engineering with stem cell research.

“I’ve always been passionate about science. I chose this path in stem cell research and regenerative medicine because I want to help people have a better life and live longer,” says Rohani.

Rohani was a part of a team of researchers from the McCaig Institute for Bone and Joint Health, Schulich School of Engineering and the biomedical engineering graduate program that developed a way to make large quantities of pluripotent stem cells that maintain their effectiveness using bioreactors.

“For the study, we changed the type of stem cells so they can be expanded to create a better model for disease, industrial-scale and cell tropism,” explains Rohani, first author on the study published in Communications Biology a Nature publication. The ability to make large quantities of pluripotent stem cells will have a huge impact on regenerative medicine.

Rohani just completed her postdoctoral fellowship and she started a position as a stem cell scientist at the Centre for Heart Lung Innovation at the University of British Columbia.