Dr. Afsaneh Lavasanifar’s area of expertise is pharmaceutics and drug delivery. She is a professor in the Pharmaceutical Sciences division of the Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Alberta and has a joint appointment with the Department of Chemical and Medical Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering at the same university. She is also the Scientific Chief Officer and Vice President of Meros Pharma, a spinoff company based on the technology developed in her lab. Her research has been funded by grants from Natural Science and Engineering Council of Canada (NSERC), Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR), Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI); Alberta Innovates Health Solutions (AIHS) and Alberta Cancer Foundation (ACF).
Dr. Lavasanifar has more than 170 peer reviewed manuscripts in highly ranked journals in pharmaceutical sciences, 3 book chapters, several abstracts, numerous conference presentations and invited talks in national and international conferences. She is the main inventor or co-inventor in 12 different issued or pending patent applications. Dr Lavasanifar is the associate scientific director of Nanomedicine Innovation Network (NMIN) Center of Excellence. She is currently the Associate Editor of Molecular Pharmaceutics and ACS Bio & Med Chem Au.