Toronto
Shiva Amiri
Shiva is currently a Senior Program Lead at the Ontario Institute where she works on research and commercialization of cutting edge neuroscience projects to translate research into patient centred outcomes. Previously, Shiva was a Program Officer at Grand Challenges Canada where she worked to implement innovative solutions for global health’s greatest challenges. She was formerly the Team Lead for UK’s Science and Innovation Network in Canada. Her role was facilitating scientific collaborations between UK and Canadian universities and research laboratories and encouraging innovation by providing access to the best technologies and policies. She has also been working on a Computational Biology start-up company for the past two years on next generation screening methodologies. She completed her D.Phil. (Ph.D.) in Computational Biochemistry at the University of Oxford where she focused her work on computational studies of membrane proteins involved in neuronal diseases. Prior to her studies at Oxford, she received an Honour’s Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Toronto with a double major in Computer Science and Human Biology. During this time, she conducted research at the Best Institute for Medical Research’s Bioinformatics and Proteomics program.
Shiva is involved with several organisations including Let’s Talk Science, Shabeh Jomeh, and the Canadian Science Policy Conference. Apart from science, her interests include history, film, and fine arts. She also likes to play sports, travel, and involve herself in humanitarian causes in the developing world.
Farhad Sadeghi
Farhad was born in Iran and moved to the U.S./Canada at the age of 13. He has a degree in Chemical Engineering from University of Toronto complemented with few years of graduate studies and research in Biomedical Engineering. He has been working for Dell Canada as a senior Systems Consultant/Engineer for over ten years helping large corporations efficiently use their enterprise infrastructure and overcome their IT challenges. Farhad was the vice-president and president of University of Toronto Iranian Student Association in the early 90’s. He loves the outdoor activities and sports, including soccer, ping pong and volleyball. He is also an avid chess player.

Toronto