Guided by the Unexpected: a dive into the research journey of Faraz Mardakheh

Professor Faraz Mardakheh began his research quest as an undergraduate at the University of Birmingham, after which he completed his PhD on receptor tyrosine kinase signalling in cancer. His journey continued at the Institute of Cancer Research in London, where he became a postdoctoral fellow investigating signalling mechanisms behind cancer invasion and metastasis. An unexpected turn of events, as often happens in research, awakened a passion for RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) which guides his research interests to date. Last year, Professor Mardakheh’s career experienced another exciting shift as he relocated his lab from the Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London, to the University of Oxford. Leveraging their expertise in cutting-edge Mass Spectrometry-based proteomics complemented by RNA-sequencing, bioinformatics and a variety of cell-based and biochemical techniques, the Mardakheh lab aims to explore the mysterious world of RBPs and, more specifically, their implications in malignant transformation.