RESEARCH

Ali’s research interests lie at the intersection of tissue engineering, disease modeling and nano-biomaterials. In particular he has studied applications of self-assembling peptides for dispersing carbon nanotubes, fabrication of mediator-less nano-biosensors, developing injectable peptide-CNT hydrogels, cancer cell spheroid formation (for tumor microenvironment studies) and tissue engineering. During his postdoc at UofT, he focused on skin regeneration specifically for burn patients and involved in different projects including skin tissue engineering (fabrication/modification of scaffolds using methods like electrospinning, lyophilization, soft lithography and 3D bioprinting of DECM), extracting AGWJ-derived exosomes from umbilical cord for wound healing and isolating burn-derived stem cells for skin regeneration. He is a big fan of AFM and tries to take advantage of this multifunctional tool in his research. In the big picture he is interested in scarless skin regeneration, cell and tumor microenvironment, disease modeling and immunoengineering and is going to employ different biomaterial/hydrogel and cell/organoid systems along with techniques like microfluidics and organ-on-a-chip devices to research on these topics. Besides the cutting-edge research, he also believes in product-oriented research that can be easily pushed toward commercialization down the road with a more tangible benefit to the clinic and society.