Niloofar Nickaeen

My graduate studies were mostly focused on the interdisciplinary field of systems biology and therefore, I used to work simultaneously in ‘Control and Industrial Automation Research Center (IUT)’ and ‘Regenerative Medicine Research Center (Isfahan University of Medical Sciences)’ to be able to integrate modeling approaches with hot topics in biology. During my Ph.D. program, I also joined the Department of Computer Science, Brandenburg University of Technology, Germany for a sabbatical period (2018-2019) where I studied Petri Nets and their applications in biological systems modeling.

I started to get interested in systems biology when I was working on my M.Sc. thesis which was about modeling a signaling pathway. While working on biological systems, their networks and modules, I was always fascinated by how “engineered” those systems are. As a control engineer, I was trained to implement control algorithms and yet I could detect “finely-tuned control modules” which were right there at the heart of biological networks. That fascination led me to persue a Ph.D. in the same field.  The Dissertation was centered around revealing the dynamics behind macrophage polarization and phenotype distribution using mathematical modeling approaches. Having worked on the immune system, I was hoping to find a post-doctoral position with a pretty much same research line when I came across the X-HiDE project in Örebro University and I was fortunate enough to be accepted to fill in the position. I am hoping that this opportunity would help me expand my expertise and serve as a basis for future positions.