René Zahedi, MSc, PhD

Dr. Rene Zahedi received a master's degree in biochemistry from the University of Bochum in Germany in 2004 and his PhD from the University of Würzburg in Germany in 2008 for his research on the phosphoproteome of human platelets.

After working as a postdoctoral fellow for two years, he became an independent junior principal investigator for signalling proteomics from 2010 to 2014 and later a permanent senior principal investigator for protein dynamics from 2014 to 2017 at the Leibniz Institute for Analytical Sciences in Germany.

From 2010 to 2017, Dr. Zahedi was the head of the Bioanalytics Study Group of the German Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and a member of the Education Committee of the European Proteomics Association from 2015 to 2017.

In 2018, Dr. Zahedi joined the Segal Cancer Proteomics Centre at the Jewish General Hospital of McGill University in Montreal as associate director and became an associated member of McGill's Centre for Translational Research in Cancer.

In 2021, he was elected to the board of the Canadian National Proteomics Network and has been serving as editor-in-chief of Expert Review of Proteomics since 2021.

In 2022, he joined the department of internal medicine at the University of Manitoba as a full professor and became the new director of the Manitoba Centre for Proteomics and Systems Biology.

Dr. Zahedi has published more than 140 peer-reviewed articles in renowned journals such as Cell, Nature Biotechnology, and Nature Communications, earning an h-index of 53. His research has focused on using quantitative mass spectrometry to study human platelets, which play a role in cardiovascular disease, and on the dynamics of platelet activation and inhibition through temporal phosphoproteomics.

He has also developed innovative methods for analyzing post-translational modifications such as protein phosphorylation, proteolytic cleavage, N-terminomics, and redox modifications, as well as their interactions.

Education

• Postdoctoral Fellow, Leibniz-Institute for Analytical Sciences (ISAS), Dortmund, Germany
• Postdoctoral Fellow, Rudolf-Virchow-Center, DFG Research Center for Experimental Biomedicine, University of Würzburg, Germany
• PhD in Biochemistry, University of Würzburg, Germany
• Master of Science in Biochemistry, University of Bochum, Germany
• Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry, University of Bochum, Germany

Awards

• Humboldt host, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (2016-2017)
• Honorary member, Society for the Advancement of Biomedical and Clinical Research
• Biomedicine Science Award, Society for the Advancement of Biomedical and Clinical Research, Dortmund, Germany 
• Stipend from the University Clinic Würzburg, Germany