Profile
I am a Lecturer in Life Course Epidemiology in the Centre for Preventive Neurology. My background is in clinical medicine and public health. As an epidemiologist, I am interested in the etiology of diseases, particularly those rooted in early life exposures. My research is mainly based on large-scale cohort studies, and I have worked on a wide range of populations and diseases.
I was the Director and co-principal investigator of the Isfahan Cohort Study (ICS), a prospective population-based study on cardiovascular disease risk factors. I was later trained in nutritional epidemiology and researched the role of diet in the development of cardiometabolic diseases and impaired cognitive function. Since I joined the QMUL, I have been studying the role of diet in
childhood asthma and lung function, with a particular interest in gene-diet interaction. In response to the outbreak of coronavirus disease, I contributed to establishing a population-based cohort study, COVIDENCE-UK, to investigate COVID-19. My recent studies delve into the shared developmental origins of lung function, cardiovascular traits, cognitive function, and Alzheimer’s Disease, as well as shared genetic and environmental risk factors of asthma and ADHD in childhood.
I undertook clinical training (MD) at the Isfahan University of Medical Sciences (Iran). I have a Master of Public Health (MPH) from the University of Birmingham (UK) and attained my PhD from the National University of Singapore (Singapore). I am an editor for the International Journal of Epidemiology. I teach in the Epidemiology and Statistics module for postgraduate students in the Global Public Health and Policy course.