PhD Candidate at the Shokat Lab (@kevansf), @UCSF || Past: Senior RA @LukeGilbertSF, @arcinstitute • Post-bac @HarvardDBMI • BSc MSc @UnivOfTehran
San Francisco
Joined October 2021
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Abolfazl Arab (Abe) retweeted
UCSF’s Kevan Shokat, PhD, just won the $1M Stephenson Global Prize for research in pancreatic cancer. He cracked KRAS, a cancer driver long considered “undruggable.” Drugs built on his work now treat lung and pancreatic cancer. ow.ly/xVlw50ZRSXh
ALT Middle-aged man in a blue lab coat smiling while seated in a scientific laboratory setting.
ALT Hand wearing black glove holding five small glass vials with various colored liquids, including pink and orange hues.
Abolfazl Arab (Abe) retweeted
Congrats to UCSF’s Kevan Shokat, PhD, Joseph DeRisi, PhD, Susan Lynch, PhD, and Stephen Hauser, MD, on winning the first-ever UC Regents Innovation Awards! See how their research is advancing cancer treatment, diagnostics, disease prevention, and MS care.
ucsf.edu/news/2026/09/432636…
There is no mafia, it’s science which should speak for itself. Sometimes it works and that’s amazing!
This is fun. 3/4 of the featured articles in Cell:
Tahoe-100M by @tahoe_ai team, led by @iamjohnnyyu
VCC led by Hani @genophoria, Johnny's PhD advisor
And the fourth paper led by @SohailTavazoie, Hani's post-doc adviser.
The Tavazoie mafia CellMaxxing 🎉
Abolfazl Arab (Abe) retweeted
Valuable work dissecting some of the key challenges with variant effect prediction on gene expression using supervised sequence models.
Excited to announce a new preprint that investigates the ability of sequence-to-function models (S2F; e.g., AlphaGenome) to identify causal expression modifying variants. (1\n)
biorxiv.org/content/10.64898…
Abolfazl Arab (Abe) retweeted
I’m excited to share that we are looking for a postdoctoral researcher to join my lab at Yale.
If you, or someone you know, might be interested, please feel free to reach out or share this post.
postdocs.yale.edu/posts/2026…
Abolfazl Arab (Abe) retweeted
Loss of function for 1 gene can make a cancer cell resist a DNA damage response (DDR) inhibitor, while another gene can make it easy to kill. Core Investigator @LukeGilbertSF and collaborators mapped both across five DDR inhibitors and found loss of PRDX1 sensitizes cells to all five.
Abolfazl Arab (Abe) retweeted
Cells mitigate damage to DNA in surprising ways. Using a series of CRISPRi chemogenomics screens, we identified a PRDX1-dependent iron–damage axis in the DNA damage response.
Congratulations to Tom, Abe, Shaheen, Josep and all co-authors!
doi.org/10.1038/s41589-026-0…
Abolfazl Arab (Abe) retweeted
ProteinDPO: a protein language model for stability prediction and generation of thermostable protein sequences. @BrianHie
nature.com/articles/s41592-0…
Abolfazl Arab (Abe) retweeted
ENCODE GRAMMAR: A deep learning model resource for decoding the DNA sequence logic of regulatory elements in the human genome genomicsxai.github.io/blogs/…
Abolfazl Arab (Abe) retweeted
Very excited to announce ENCODE GRAMMAR (Genomic Regulatory Atlas of sequence Models, Motifs, Annotations & Rules): 3,865 experiment-specific deep learning model sets and sequence annotations for decoding human regulatory DNA. 1/
Abolfazl Arab (Abe) retweeted
NYC AI + biotech folks: We’re opening the Northeast AI4D3 post-workshop social to the public!
Join researchers, builders and founders working at the intersection of AI and drug discovery for an evening of networking.
Mon, Aug. 3 | 5:30–8:30 PM | Brooklyn
RSVP: luma.com/5wv5xf7g
Abolfazl Arab (Abe) retweeted
Risks of serious health consequences due to prolonged stress & burnout are real. I'm increasingly seeing many glorifying driving oneself into the ground either out of hyper enthusiasm or some form of hyper fomo & panic about potentially being left behind. 1/
Learned today at #ismb2026 from @yun_s_song that you could train a powerful model using your own BPUs: Brain Powered Units.
Abolfazl Arab (Abe) retweeted
The model is quite simply a mess outside of coding DNA + proximal zones around them. It's a really poor model of most of the tree of life except maybe compact genomes like viruses & bacteria. 3/
Abolfazl Arab (Abe) retweeted
During the first travel ban, we raised awareness through signatures, op-eds, and interviews. This time is much worse and I think we also need something more concrete: real stories and real data.
I'm collecting accounts of how recent U.S. visa and immigration restrictions are affecting Iranians, specifically students, scholars, scientists, clinicians, and their families.
If this has affected you or someone you know, please share your experience here (and share this form with others): forms.gle/wAgLaFjHb8Fu15Pq8
Please do not include sensitive identifying details!
"The" whole civilization doesn't die simply because it is alive. It has contributed to many other civilizations and will continue to do so. Better days will come to the motherland #Iran 💚🤍❤️
Abolfazl Arab (Abe) retweeted
It was a pleasure to highlight Barbadilla-Martínez et al. (Nature). A powerful example of how integrative approaches uncover layers of genome regulation, linking mechanism to function and opening paths toward disease insights.
nature.com/articles/s41422-0…
Abolfazl Arab (Abe) retweeted
Heartbreaking to see Iranian scientists and universities getting bombed every day. It used to be targeted assassination of nuclear scientists since 2007 (see the list en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assass…) but it has expanded to other fields and their entire neighborhoods and departments.
