Dr Nona Farbehi

Dr Nona Farbehi is a Senior Lecturer at the Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering, UNSW Sydney. She completed her PhD jointly at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute in the laboratory of Prof Richard Harvey and at UNSW in the laboratory of A/Prof Robert Nordon, supported by funding from an International Postgraduate Research Scholarship (IPRS) and Stem Cells Australia (SCA).

Following her doctoral training, Dr Farbehi played a key role in establishing the Garvan–Weizmann Centre for Cellular Genomics (GWCCG), a state-of-the-art national facility providing single-cell and multi-omic technologies to researchers across Australia and internationally. She then undertook postdoctoral training in Prof Joseph Powell’s group from 2020, where her work focused on population-scale stem cell technologies to investigate how common genetic variation shapes cellular phenotypes.

Dr Farbehi joined UNSW Sydney in 2022 and has since established an independent, interdisciplinary research program at the interface of biomedical engineering, genomics, and biomaterials. Her research integrates large-scale single-cell and spatial transcriptomics, advanced bioinformatics, and the design and fabrication of novel biomaterials and microfluidic systems to study cell–material interactions and tissue repair in health and disease.