Kaveh Ashrafi, PhD

Kaveh Ashrafi earned his undergraduate degree in Biochemistry from Virginia Tech before pursuing a PhD in Molecular Cell Biology and Biochemistry at Washington University School of Medicine. He completed subsequent postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School and The Massachusetts General Hospital before joining the UCSF.

The overall goal of his lab’s research is to understand energy balance in the context of intact animals, how metabolism affects neural functions, and how aberrations in energy balance underlie pathological conditions such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension and cancer.  Most of their work relies on experimental advantages of C. elegans although they conduct some mouse studies through collaborative efforts. Their approaches involve a combination of molecular genetics, imaging, biochemistry, and chemical biology.