Dr. Alen Faiz

Institute: UTS

Dr Alen Faiz is a molecular biologist and geneticist who is leader of the Respiratory Bioinformatics and Molecular Biology (RBMB) Lab. The labs primary focus is to understanding the biology of respiratory systems at the genetic and epigenetic levels, including under conditions of exposure to cigarette smoke and viral infection. Dr Faiz’s research program has made significant contributions to the understanding of the molecular pathways that underpin the development and progression of COPD and asthma through the development of bioinformatics pipelines and advanced cell culture and genetic editing techniques.

Dr Faiz obtained his PhD at the University of Sydney, Woolcock Institute of Medical Research in 2014. He then travelled on a RESPIRE2 fellowship from ERS as a postdoctoral researcher at the Experimental Pulmonology and Inflammation Research (EXPIRE) laboratory, Department of Pathology and Medical Biology, University Medical Centre Groningen, the Netherlands (2014-18).

Dr Faiz started at University of Technology Sydney (UTS) in 2018 and was promoted to Senior Lecture in 2021. Dr Faiz has established a research program in Australia where he developed and set up the UTS CRISPR facility (2019-ongoing). As leader of this facility, he provide expert advice and training to students and research staff

Recently Dr Faiz has focused on understand risk factors associated with SARs-CoV-2 infection through investigating the expression of genes required for viral entry which was published in an article by Reuters and picked up by the New York Times (https://medrxiv.altmetric.com/details/89343468/news).

Dr Faiz has won American Thoracic Society Rising Star Award in 2018 and 2019 and the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Lung Science Award in 2020.