Winner Profile: Trushar Patel

Early Career Investigator Award Profile

Trushar Patel

2022 Award Recipient

Dr. Trushar Patel obtained a BSc (2000) and an MSc (2002) in Biotechnology from India. He joined the University of Nottingham in the UK for his PhD (2007), where he studied solution structure and interactions of plant polysaccharides. Subsequently, he joined the University of Manitoba in Canada, working on the structures of human extracellular matrix proteins. Dr. Patel started his career as an independent researcher at the University of Lethbridge in 2016.

Dr. Patel uses interdisciplinary approaches to study the interaction of viral nucleic acids with host proteins – an interaction at the heart of viral infections. Information on the specific sites of host proteins that communicate with viral nucleic acids will ultimately allow the development of therapeutics that prevent host-viral communication. These interactions are essential for the survival and replication of the virus – stopping the interactions is thus of benefit for treating viral infection.

Dr. Patel holds a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in RNA and Protein Biophysics. He is also one of the editors of the European Biophysics Journal. His work was supported by postdoctoral fellowships from the Manitoba Institute of Child Health (2008) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (2010). He also received the Marie Sklodowska-Curie fellowship (2013) from the European Union. He has been very active in training the next generation of researchers, as well as with scientific and science-policy-related conference organizing activities.