Dr. Ava Nasrollahi

Ava is currently pursuing Postdoctoral fellow at Dr. Yao's lab. Her academic journey began with a bachelor’s degree in Biology, when she developed a keen interest in exploring how malfunction of normal physiological mechanisms leads to disease progression. This passion led her to pursue a master’s degree in Physiology, specializing in animal models and focusing on molecular and cellular Pathways.

Building on this foundation, Ava later pursued a PhD in Molecular Medicine with a focus on neurodegenerative diseases and neural stem cells. Throughout her doctoral research, she acquired expertise in inducing Parkinson's disease and stroke in mouse and rat models and became skilled at various behavioral tests,  immunohistochemistry , and molecular techniques.

Ava joined Dr. Yao's lab in August 2023 and as one of her several research projects, she is working on the decellularization of basement membrane in aged human and mouse models of Alzheimer's disease to examine the alternations in ECM components expression during aging process. Running in parallel with her current endeavors, Ava is exploring the impact of fibroblast-derived laminin γ1 in hemorrhagic stroke pathogenesis, and further advancing her skills in TEM, flow cytometry and RNA sequencing.