Cyrus Taheri
Biography
Dr. Cyrus Taheri completed his Ph.D. in Applied Microbiology from the University of Saskatchewan, where he investigated microbial community dynamics using pyrosequencing and plate culture. In 2014, he received a postdoctoral research fellowship from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) to conduct applied microbiology research at Lethbridge Research and Development Centre.
During his postdoctoral research, he performed ITS and 16S metagenomics sequencing on the Illumina MiSeq platform and conducted bioinformatics analysis to characterize various microbial communities. He also developed new PCR primers and PCR protocols for the molecular identification of bacteria, fungi and oomycetes communities.
Dr. Taheri’s primary research interests are applied microbiology and microbial molecular ecology, utilizing different next-generation sequencing technologies, plate culture and Sanger sequencing. As a visiting scholar, he had the opportunity to visit research groups in Finland and Germany, where he conducted research on plant-microbe interactions.
Dr. Taheri has led several research projects as the principal investigator, co-authored several peer-reviewed articles and one book chapter and served as a peer reviewer for several scientific journals. Since 2016, Cyrus has been a faculty member in the Donald School of Business, Science and Computing at Red Deer Polytechnic, teaching courses in Microbiology, Research Design, Introductory Cell Biology and Molecular Cell Biology.
He has also supervised numerous undergraduate students in their independent research projects, leading to international conference presentations and peer-reviewed publications. In recognition of his research achievements, Dr. Taheri received the RDP's 2023 Award of Scholarly Activity.
Education
- Ph.D. (Applied Microbiology), University of Saskatchewan
- M.Sc. (Biology), University of Tehran
- B.Sc. (Biology), University of Isfahan