Rate My Professor Shokrollah Elahi

Dr. Shokrollah Elahi is a Professor in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry's Department of Dentistry at the University of Alberta, where he joined the School of Dentistry in 2014. He earned several degrees, including a medical degree and a master's degree, from the Tehran University of Medical Sciences in Iran, followed by a PhD in Immunology from the University of Newcastle in Australia. His postdoctoral training included a fellowship at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan and another at the Center for Infectious Diseases Research affiliated with the University of Washington in Seattle, where he also served as a staff scientist focusing on HIV/AIDS pathogenesis. He then worked as a scientist at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Centre, investigating mechanisms underlying neonatal susceptibility to infectious diseases. Progressing from Assistant Professor to Full Professor at the University of Alberta, he holds a position with 75% allocated time for research.

Dr. Elahi is a cellular and molecular immunologist whose research focuses on viral pathogenesis, immune regulation, and immune system development. The Elahi Lab investigates immune dysregulation to develop protective therapeutic approaches, particularly CD8 T cell exhaustion in chronic viral infections like HIV and in cancer, including viral-associated tumors, solid tumors, hematological malignancies, neonatal immunology, and COVID-19 pathogenesis. Key publications include "Protective HIV-specific CD8+ T cells evade Treg cell suppression" (2011), "Neglected Cells: Immunomodulatory Roles of CD71+ Erythroid Cells" (Trends in Immunology, 2019), "Elevated ATP via enhanced miRNA-30b, 30c, and 30e downregulates the expression of CD73 in CD8+T cells of HIV-infected individuals" (PLoS Pathogens, 2022), and "Hematopoietic responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection" (Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences, 2022). His scholarship has over 6,000 citations. Awards include the CIHR New Investigator Award (2016), CIHR Early Career Investigators in Maternal, Fetal, and Infant Health Award (2017), Canadian Society for Immunology New Investigator Travel Award (2017), and Excellence in Mentoring Award (Dentistry Tier II). He is affiliated with the Li Ka Shing Institute of Virology, Cancer Research Institute of Northern Alberta, and Women and Children's Health Research Institute.