Sattar is an Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the California State University, Northridge (CSUN). Before joining CSUN, he received his PhD in Physics from the University of Waterloo in 2010 and completed postdoctoral work at Harvard and UC San Diego.
In his PhD project with Prof. Bae-Yeun Ha in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, he developed a statistical mechanics framework to explain the relationship between the activity and the physical properties of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs). He was the recipient of the 2011 W. B. Pearson Medal in recognition of creative PhD thesis.
After PhD and a short postdoc at Waterloo, he dived into the world of experimental biology, integrating the theoretical mindset his developed at Waterloo with modern single-cell techniques to study bacterial physiology. During his postdoctoral work with Prof. Suckjoon Jun at Harvard and UC San Diego, he discovered the “adder” principle of cell-size control that has revamped our view on growth, cell-size, and the cell cycle control in bacteria.
At CSUN, Sattar is leading an experimental research lab where he is expanding on the curiosity he developed at Waterloo on antimicrobial biophysics. In his lab, multiple students and postdoctoral fellows are currently working towards investigating the mechanism of action of antimicrobial peptides at the single-cell level. As Sattar explains in his laboratory website (http://www.csun.edu/~taheri) his research is exciting from physics prospective as well as it is very relevant to human health:
“Antimicrobial peptides are one of the components of the innate immunity of multicellular organisms, including humans. They exhibit a broad range of antibiotic activities despite their simple structures. AMPs hold promise to combat resistant bacteria due to their distinct mechanism of activity. However, AMPs' success in medicine relies on designs that are highly toxic for bacteria, yet selective enough not to harm human cells. The difficulty is that we lack a clear picture about the dynamics of AMPs' activity that can inspire new designs. In our research we aim to gain a precise and quantitative insight into the action of antimicrobial peptides in a bacterial population, at both the population level and the single-cell level”.
Profs Z.Leonenko and B.Y.Ha recently met Sattar and his students at the Biophysical Society meeting in Baltimore, USA, and learned about new and exciting developments in his research. Sattar accepted invitation to present his research at the Canadian Association of Physicists meeting in Vancouver later this year. It is wonderful to see great success of our physics alumni and we wish Sattar all the best in his research and career.
