Rate My Professor Trushar Patel

Trushar Patel is an Associate Dean and Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Science at the University of Lethbridge, where he holds the position of Canada Research Chair in RNA and Protein Biophysics. He joined the university in 2016 as an Assistant Professor on a term appointment, which transitioned to a tenure-track role in 2017 upon receiving his Canada Research Chair appointment; he was promoted to Associate Professor in 2020. Patel earned his BSc and MSc degrees in Biotechnology in India before completing his PhD at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom, where his research examined the solution structure and interactions of plant polysaccharides. He conducted postdoctoral work at the University of Manitoba, supported by fellowships from the Manitoba Institute of Child Health and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, initially focusing on human extracellular matrix proteins before shifting to RNA molecules, and later held a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom to investigate the human cytoskeleton protein Zyxin.

Patel leads the Laboratory of Medicinal Biophysics and is affiliated with the Alberta RNA Research and Training Institute in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. His research specializes in the biophysical characterization of viral nucleic acids and their interactions with human proteins, as well as the structure and function of non-coding RNAs, employing interdisciplinary methods to explore mechanisms relevant to viral infections and potential therapeutic development. He has authored over 87 peer-reviewed publications with an h-index of 31 and more than 4,000 citations, along with numerous editorials, and serves as an editor for the European Biophysics Journal. Patel has received multiple honors, including election as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Royal Society of Biology, the Alberta Newcomers Recognition Award, the Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee Medal, the New Investigator Award from the Canadian Society for Molecular Biosciences, and the Young Investigator Award from the Biophysical Society of Canada. He has also been recognized with university-level awards for research, volunteerism, and speaking, and has contributed to science policy initiatives such as Science Meets Parliament.