Mehrdad Hariri

Mehrdad is a Senior Research Analyst at the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship under Dr. Thorsteinsdóttir with a research focus on Canada’s collaborations in health biotechnology with China. In the past few years Dr. Hariri has focused his efforts on the intersection of science and policy. Using the 2008 federal election, he, along with his colleague, founded the weblog “Science Canada", with the goal of presenting and reviewing science related materials published in Canadian media. It was an opportunity to measure the presence, or lack thereof, of scientific issues in Canadian public sphere.

In 2009, he initiated the idea of a national forum on science policy in Canada, and led a group of young and passionate scientists to organize the 2009 Canadian Science Policy Conference (CSPC), where he is currently the Chair. The CSPC brings together many distinguished personalities from academic, government, industry, and non-profit sectors, from Canada and abroad, with common interests in science and policy.

Mehrdad has a D.V.M in veterinary medicine from Tehran University and MSc in cell biology from Universite de Montréal. He is trained in various disciplines: veterinary, cell biology and functional genomics. He has served at the executive boards of several community and cultural organizations with various mandates. He is passionate about interfacing science, policy, and public affairs.