Sepideh Abbasi: 20Q20 interview

Sepideh Abbasi, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow, IRCM (Montreal Clinical Research Institute) & McGill University, Experimental Medicine Department

20 questions with Sepideh Abbasi

1. Where were you born? Where did you grow up?
I was born in the province of Fars in Iran and grew up in Shiraz, also known as the City of Roses and Nightingales, a very poetic and green city that is famous for its poetry.

2. Where did you go to school?
Both my parents are teachers, so I was always involved in reading and interested in learning more. I started school at a young age and ended up graduating two years younger than the rest of my classmates. In Iran the school system is different, the last year of high school you have to take a national exam and based on your score the system will match you with different programs. With my matches I chose veterinary medicine (which is a seven year program) at Shiraz University. I finished my D.V.M degree in 2007, and got accepted into Cornell Veterinary School to do a postdoc, but because of political issues between Iran and the U.S.A. I was unable to get a visa and then started looking into Canada. Abbasi Family I went to the University of Saskatchewan Veterinary School (WCVM) for my Masters in Reproductive Biology and then came to Calgary in 2010 for my PhD in Jeff Biernaskie’s lab (UCVM) that focused on hair follicles stem cells and skin regeneration. In 2018, I moved to Montreal for my postdoctoral fellowship at Montreal Clinical Research Institute (IRCM) and McGill University in Michel Cayouette’s lab which is a retinal biology laboratory.

Read the full interview here.

Published February 2021.