Pardis Sabeti was born in Tehran, Iran. Her family moved to USA while Pardis was 4 years old – in search of the American Dream and. Pardis grew up in Orlando, Florida. Thirty years later, Pardis has not only lived the dream, but has redefined it for immigrant women everywhere, rising to the top of the scientific world by developing an algorithm which explains the effects of genetics on the evolution of disease, and reigniting hopes for cures to diseases like Malaria and Tuberculosis which have eluded scientists for years. Sabeti is the third woman to graduate summa cum laude since the school admitted its first group of female medical students in 1945.

Pardis Sabeti is one of Iran’s and even world’s most influential scientist, mathematician, senior researcher and  PH. D. at the Harvard University in the Center for Systems Biology and the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology.

Sabeti is also the lead singer and songwriter of the band, Thousand Days, who uses her music to make science appealing to children, especially, girls.

Visit Worls Top 100 living geniuses.
Visit the Sabeti lab website.
Pardis Sabeti’s band Thousand Days.

Education

• 1994 at age 19 – B.S. in Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
• 1996 at age 21 – M.Sc. in Human Biology, University of Oxford.
• 1998 at age 23 – Ph.D. in Biological Anthropology, Univercity of Oxford.
• 2006 at age 31 – Professor at Harvard Medical School.

Ranking & Awards

• 3th woman in the world with M.D. summa cum laude from Harvard Medical School.
• Fellowships include the Rhodes Scholarship.
• The Soros Fellowship.
• L’Oreal For Women in Science Fellowship.
• The Damon Runyon Cancer Foundation Post-doctoral fellowship.
• The Burroughs Wellcome Career Award in Biomedical Sciences.
• The Packard Foundation Fellowship for Science and Engineering.
• Developed a “novel test for natural selection in the human genome”.
• Co-investigator on a $2 million Bill Gates and Melinda Gates Foundation grant.

The human genome initiative is the foundation on which Sabeti’s research is based on. Sabeti has identified the blueprint of the human genome, the 3-billion nucleotide bases on 23 chromosomes that make up the genome structure. Once that blue print was done, it was possible to go back and find out all the variations that exist in human populations.  The genome project has opened the door to studying human variation as well as numerous other aspects of the genome.

On 8th June 2006 just 31 years old Sabeti officially completed her medical degree from Harvard Medical School,  summa cum laude graduation honors from Harvard Medical School (Just for those that are extremely clever and expert).

In 2002 Pardis developed an approach to detect genes that are undergoing natural selection in the human genome. In her post-doctoral work she further developed analysis and software tools to study entire genomes. She has also been working with Dyann Wirth and colleagues at the Harvard School of Public Health to study the evolution of Plasmodium falciparum malaria.

Pardis has published numerous papers in evolutionary genetics including first author publications in Nature, Science, and PLoS Biology. Pardis was named one of 8 Geniuses That will Change your Life by CNN.com, one of 100 Top Living Geniuses by the UK Daily Telegraph, a Science Spectrum Magazine Trailblazers, a Seed Magazine Revolutionary Mind, and a Genome Technology Tomorrow’s PIs.

Pardis served on the Board of Trustees of MIT from 1999-2004 and is on the SCR for Winthrop College at Harvard University. Pardis is also the lead singer and bassist of the alternative rock band Thousand Days.

Sabeti completed her undergraduate degree at MIT and continued her education at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, before returning to the U.S. to earn her medical degree from Harvard Medical School where she became the third woman ever to graduate summa cum laude.

Sabeti is now an Professor in the Center for Systems Biology and Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University where she is continuing her research, using her algorithm to deconstruct the malaria parasite to see how the parasite has evolved. By seeing how the parasite has evolved to develop drug resistances, she hopes to detect genetic vulnerabilities in malaria’s makeup. If she’s successful, future cures will be designed to attack those weaknesses.