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Hadi Azarabad
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Decoding how living tissue withstands the forces of becoming.

I study the molecular mechanisms of cell resilience, gene regulation, and tissue morphogenesis , from the keratin scaffolds that protect early mammalian embryos to the computational methods that make sense of the genome underneath.

About

Trained across three academic systems, one throughline

Abstract render of a DNA helix dissolving into a glowing computational neural network

I'm a biotechnologist and computational biologist working at the intersection of developmental biology and data. After a foundation in biotechnology at the University of Tehran and graduate research in applied AI for health at the University of Pisa, I'm now a Ph.D. student at IRIBHM (ULB), investigating how intermediate filaments give extra-embryonic tissue the mechanical integrity to survive early development.

  • Ph.D. Student, Biomedicine and Pharmacy2026 , Present
  • M.Sc. Biotechnology and Applied Artificial Intelligence for Health2023 , 2025
  • B.Sc. Biotechnology2016 , 2021
Full background & competencies
Research

Doctoral & master's research lines

All research
Active2026 , Present

Mechanobiology of Extra-Embryonic Tissues

Keratin intermediate filaments in early mammalian development

IRIBHM, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB)

Investigating how Keratin intermediate filaments (KRT8/KRT18) give extra-embryonic lineages the mechanical integrity to survive continuous physical stress during early development.

Discuss collaboration
CompletedNov 2024 , Oct 2025

AI-Based Biosignal Phenotyping of Meditation

Central & autonomic nervous system adaptations to analytical meditation

Research Center "E. Piaggio" & Dept. of Genetics, University of Pisa

Master's thesis characterizing central and peripheral neurophysiological correlates of expert meditation through synchronized EEG and autonomic biosignal analysis.

Bioinformatics Portfolio

Selected computational projects

All projects
Normalized validation confusion matrix across 15 leukocyte classes from the AML cytomorphology classifier01

Hematopathology · Computational Cytology · Leukemic Cell Morphology

Morphological Leukocyte Phenotyping in Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Automated identification and phenotypic classification of 15 white blood cell lineages and blast stages in peripheral blood smears from AML patients.

Applied attention-based computational architectures to evaluate fine-grained cytological markers , chromatin condensation patterns, cytoplasmic granulation, and nuclear contour irregularities , achieving 94.7% accuracy aligned with standard cytopathological criteria.

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Multi-omic integration heatmap linking STAT1 ChIP-seq peaks to bulk and single-cell interferon-response gene expression02

Transcriptomics · Epigenomics · Immune Gene Regulation

Multi-Omic Atlas of the STAT1 Interferon Response

Integrative multi-omic dissection of the transcriptional and epigenetic landscape mediated by STAT1 during interferon stimulation in human monocytes.

Built a reproducible workflow linking chromatin accessibility to downstream gene expression, mapping 800 STAT1 binding peaks across 710 genes and identifying 42 interferon-stimulated response genes with concordant epigenomic and transcriptomic evidence.

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Cell-type-specific gene regulatory network reconstructed from paired PBMC scRNA-seq and scATAC-seq data03

Single-Cell Multi-Omics · Chromatin Dynamics · Immunogenomics

Gene Regulatory Network Inference in Immune Lineages

Decoding transcriptional regulatory hierarchies directly from paired single-cell RNA and ATAC sequencing (10x Genomics PBMC multiome).

Linked distal open chromatin peaks to cis-regulatory target promoters to reconstruct cell-type-specific regulatory networks, prioritizing key myeloid transcription factors such as AP-1 subunits (FOS, FOSB) and STAT1.

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Get in touch

Open to collaboration, review, and doctoral exchange.

Reach out about the extra-embryonic mechanobiology project, a bioinformatics dataset, or a peer-review request.

Email me