Hi there! my name is Shahrokh (Sharok), I’m a graduate student, and welcome to my website!

I’ve completed my undergrad in molecular biology in Tehran and came to McMaster University in September 2014 to do a Master’s in Bioinformatics under the supervision of Brian Golding in the department of biology. My Master’s thesis focused on environmental monitoring using eDNA. We have developed a database of bioindicator species to identify these organisms from the bulk ecological samples to study the impact of anthropogenic activities.

In December 2016, I joined Michael Surette’s lab as a research assistant for one year. Subsequently, I started my Ph.D. in January 2018 to pursue my interest in the human gut microbiome. In my Ph.D. dissertation, I’m working to develop a culture-enriched metagenomic (CEMG) approach to study intestinal microbiota in healthy individuals and patients with ulcerative colitis. We have shown that the CEMG approach provides a greater resolution to study more difficult microbiome-related questions such as microbial engraftment after fecal microbiota transplantation. This work is currently under revision. To know more about my ongoing projects, please visit here and to see my list of publications so far, please visit this page.

Besides my Ph.D. studies, I have been a part-time bioinformatics consultant for eDNAtec company since Jan 2019. I’ve developed a metagenomic pipeline to evaluate deep ocean samples’ functional and taxonomic composition for different environmental genomics applications. Also, I developed bioinformatics pipelines to detect SARS-COV-2 from environmental samples with low DNA templates.

If you are not interested in the microbiome or environment conservation, we can talk about craft beer and coffee!

Please click HERE to see my complete CV.