My pronouns are he/him
I am a Wellcome Trust Early Career Research Fellow and Independent Investigator leading the Ghafari Research Group in the Department of Biology at the University of Oxford, currently based in the Peter Medawar Building for Pathogen Research. I am also affiliated with the Data Analytics and Epidemiology Group at the Pandemic Sciences Institute and hold a college position as the Kemp Junior Research Fellow in Medical Sciences at Lincoln College.
Our group develops quantitative frameworks to study the molecular evolution of pathogens, particularly those with epidemic or pandemic potential and with implications for human, animal, and plant health. We integrate concepts from phylogenetics, population genetics, evolutionary theory, and structural biology to reconstruct evolutionary histories, trace pathogen origins in non-human reservoirs, and evaluate their potential to cause outbreaks or evade existing therapeutics.
I hold a BSc in Physics from Sharif University of Technology and an MSc in Physics from Emory University, where I specialised in statistical physics and quantitative modelling in evolutionary biology. This included a one-year visiting position in the Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge. I completed my DPhil in Interdisciplinary Biosciences at the University of Oxford in 2022, with a thesis focused on quantitative analysis of the mode and tempo of viral molecular evolution.
I’m always happy to hear from motivated researchers interested in joining the group. If you’re considering a rotation, Master’s project, or DPhil work on the quantitative analysis of pathogen evolution, please get in touch at mahan.ghafari@biology.ox.ac.uk. Ongoing projects include developing methods to quantify evolutionary rates, investigating drivers of rate variation across hosts and timescales, and building new tools to reconstruct and interpret outbreak dynamics.
