Our Team | TLMR Lab

Principal Investigator

Dr. Hooman Derakhshani

Assistant Professor, Department of Animal Science Principal Investigator

Dr. Derakhshani leads the TLMR Lab with a focus on decoding the complex interactions between livestock hosts and their resident microbiota. With a background in veterinary medicine and microbial ecology, he drives the lab's strategic direction.

Research focus

Host-microbe interactions in ruminants and swine.
Development of microbiome-based therapeutics.
Integration of multi-omics data (metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, metabolomics).

University of Manitoba, Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences

Room 230 Animal Science Building, 12 Dafoe Road, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3T 2N2, Canada

hooman.derakhshani@umanitoba.ca

Postdoctoral Fellows

Dr. A S M Zisanur Rahman

Research Manitoba Postdoctoral Fellow · Mitacs Accelerate Postdoctoral Fellow

Dr. Rahman specializes in molecular microbiology, chemical genetics, and advanced computational biology. He leads the lab's computational pipeline development for analyzing complex metagenomic and genome-resolved datasets.

Research focus: Multi-omics integration with metabolic modelling, and artificial intelligence-driven approaches to reduce enteric methane emissions from ruminant livestock.

Personal website

Graduate Students

PhD Students

Nahidur Rahman

PhD StudentCo-supervised with Dr. Nazim Cicek

Nahidur holds a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) degree (2021) and a Master's degree in Microbiology (2023) from Sylhet Agricultural University, Bangladesh.

Research focus: Nahidur's research is situated within a One Health framework and focuses on understanding and tracking the spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in the dairy industry through microbiome and genomic data. His work aims to develop comprehensive databases and analytical approaches to support AMR surveillance and risk assessment across animal production systems.

MSc Students

Larissa Scott

MSc Student

Larissa is researching the cattle microbiome and its role in enteric methane emissions. She holds a bachelor's degree in Animal Science and has previous experience working in a veterinary clinic, as well as in food safety and inspection. Outside of research, she spends much of her time with her horse and dog, and unapologetically enjoys winter and snow.

Research focus: Characterizing the rumen microbiota and fermentation pathways. Her aim is to identify homoacetogenic bacteria and anti-methanogenic natural products to mitigate enteric methane emissions.

Anindita Roy

MSc Student

Anindita has a background in biotechnology and genetic engineering. She has prior research experience in microbial culture (bacteria, bacteriophages, and cyanobacteria), animal disease models, animal cell culture, and gut inflammation, with a particular focus on probiotic and synbiotic regulation of intestinal inflammation and host immune signaling.

Research focus: Evaluating postbiotics as dietary interventions to improve gut health, immune development, and passive immunity transfer from sows to piglets, with the goal of mitigating post-weaning diarrhea (PWD). Her interests include host–microbiome interactions, mucosal immunity, gut barrier function, immune modulation, and translational strategies to improve health and resilience in intensive swine production systems.

Gary Chan

MSc StudentAffiliated with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

Gary previously worked as a Research Assistant at the School of Public Health, University of Hong Kong, where he contributed to projects focused on antimicrobial resistance, the human microbiome, and One Health.

Research focus: The transmission of antimicrobial resistance in Canadian agricultural systems and the development of mitigation strategies.

Research Support

Arezoo Alizadeh

Research Technician

Arezoo manages daily lab operations, ensuring safety compliance and overseeing ongoing projects in the lab. She holds a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree and an MSc degree in Animal Science.

Expertise: Sample processing, project management, molecular biology workflows.

Tasneem Hassan Muna

Research Technician

Tasneem supports the lab's experimental and analytical workflows, with a strong background in protein and structural biology, proteomics, and mammalian cell culture. She contributes to molecular and proteomic analyses that complement the lab's microbiome and genomics research, and is currently involved in high-throughput screening of microbial natural products against common pathogens and in assessing host immune responses following exposure to these natural products.

Expertise: Protein biology, X-ray crystallography, proteomics, mammalian cell culture, host–microbe interaction assays, and anaerobic culturing.