Arian Mirzarafie Ahi

Arian, PGDE, is a Professional Tutor. Arian founded a natural philosophy, scientific communication, and speaking organization built on a legacy of training A-level biology students, supporting education and research, and applying the laws of biology to technology and philosophy. The center publishes its own newsletter.

In 2011, Arian Founded and is Writer and Director at the only EdTech for all global biology qualifications (A-level, IB, and SAT). He founded the website to help United Kingdom students studying for their A-level exam in Biology.

Previously, he was a Teacher of Science at United Learning between 2020 and 2022 and also the CREST Award Assessor for the British Science Association, where he was directly involved with student submissions and was responsible for final awards from 2017 to 2020.

Arian earned his Bachelor's of Science Degree in Biological Sciences in 2015 from Birkbeck, University of London. He earned his Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) in 2021 and his Postgraduate Diploma in Education and Leadership (PGDE) in 2022, both from Canterbury Christ Church University.

After getting out of City College Norwich in 2011 with an A in A-level in Biology, Arian did his research as an intern at Birkbeck in 2012 on Protein Crystallography of Hsp90. A year later, he continued at the University of Cambridge optimizing decellularization and homogenization of various tissue types for ELISA.

During his 2013 SENS Research Foundation Summer Internship, Arian worked with the research group of Dr. William Bains at the University of Cambridge, which specializes in seeking compounds for degrading Advanced Glycation End-products (AGEs). AGEs are by-products of aging that accumulate in the area between cells called the ExtraCellular Matrix (ECM). The ?cross-linking? of AGEs causes wrinkles, stiff joints, hypertension, blindness, and other age-related conditions.

Arian's project focused on optimizing the decellularization step that precedes quantitation of AGEs.

In 2014, he did his intern research on bioinformatics on D. melanogaster transposable elements at the University of Muenster, and finally in 2015 at the University College London where he worked on protein crystallography on the E. coli MhpD protein. He also authored the blog Principles of Evolution, where he discussed such topics as evolutionary theory, philosophy, and space travel.

In 2015, Arian was also BBK iGEM 2015 Team Member, the very first Birkbeck team to enter the international Genetically Engineered Machine competition awarded Bronze. They designed and produced plasmid constructs to transform E. coli cells. He spoke for the finale in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

His final year project at Birkbeck before graduation with BSc was on investigating protein nanocages, and throughout the years had research internships on protein crystallography, tissue engineering, and bioinformatics. After iGEM, Arian started a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Biosciences at UCL, where he did his research on the 3D biofabrication of artificial organs (Functional scaffolds for bioengineering), calibrating for 3D printing including CAD designing, and culturing human connective tissue, muscle, and bone stem cells.

In 2016, he was Ph.D. Fellow at King's College London and University College London with his research on the role of rare codons in determining correct folding of membrane proteins. After a year, he decided to end his Ph.D. and continued as Senior Analyst at the Biogerontology Research Foundation in 2018.