CV

Selected Honors and Awards

• Omenn-Darling Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship (2022)
  $85,000 annually for three years
  Omenn-Darling Bioengineering Institute, Princeton University

• Finalist, Center for Physics of Biological Function Postdoctoral Fellowship (2022)
  Department of Physics, Princeton University

• Selected for Soft Matter For All Symposium, NSF MRSEC Center, Princeton University (2021)

• Selected for Future Faculty Symposium, Cornell University (2019)

• CTAM Award for Technology Acceleration ($50,000 for a year), Cornell University (2018)

• NSF I-Corps National Program Award ($30,000 for a year) (2018)

• Ranked #1 in Graduate Program, LAPRI (2016)

• Ranked #2 among 20,000 participants in Iranian Nationwide Entrance Exam (Photonics) (2014)

• Ranked #6 among 20,000 participants in Iranian Nationwide Entrance Exam (Physics) (2014)

• Ranked #63 among 500,000 participants in Iranian Nationwide College Entrance Exam (2009)

• Silver Medal, National Physics Olympiad (2008)

Academic Publications

Postdoc publications

1. Emergent Gliding Microtubule Carpets For High-Throughput Molecular Transport (In prep)
   M. Zaferani, N.S. Wingreen, H.A. Stone, S. Petry

2. Sperm hyperactivation drives a circling-and-wandering migration strategy (Under revision, Nature Communications)
   M. Zaferani*, Y. Baouche, Y. Lago-Alvarez, A. Chandrakant Pandya, S.H. Cheong, S. Petry, C. Kurzthaler*, H.A. Stone* (*corresponding authors)

3. Boundary-sensing mechanism in branched microtubule networks, Nature Chemical Engineering 2025
   M. Zaferani, R. Song, N.S. Wingreen, H.A. Stone, S. Petry

4. Statistical evaluation of sperm hyperactivated motility as an indicator of male and female infertility
   M. Zaferani, H.A. Stone (U.S. provisional patent, May 2025)

5. Building on-chip cytoskeletal circuits via branched microtubule networks, PNAS 2024
   M. Zaferani, R. Song, N.S. Wingreen, H.A. Stone, S. Petry

PhD publications

1. Biphasic chemokinesis of mammalian sperm, PRL 2023
   M. Zaferani, A. Abbaspourrad

2. Mammalian sperm hyperactivation regulates navigation via physical boundaries and promotes pseudo-chemotaxis, PNAS 2021
   M. Zaferani, S.S. Suarez, A. Abbaspourrad

3. Rolling controls sperm navigation in response to the dynamic rheological properties of the environment, eLife 2021
   M. Zaferani, F. Javi, A. Abbaspourrad

4. Strictures of a microchannel impose fierce competition to select for highly motile sperm, Science Advances 2019
   M. Zaferani, G. Palermo, A. Abbaspourrad

5. Rheotaxis-based separation of sperm with progressive motility using a microfluidic corral system, PNAS 2018
   M. Zaferani, S.H. Cheong, A. Abbaspourrad

6. Rheotaxis-based separation of motile sperm and bacteria using a microfluidic corral system (U.S. patent serial No. 16/374,529)
   M. Zaferani, S.H. Cheong, A. Abbaspourrad