Hossein Farahani

Research Associate · Machine Learning Lead

Hossein Farahani

AI in Medicine Lab · School of Biomedical Engineering, University of British Columbia

I am a computational biologist and machine-learning scientist developing multimodal AI for translational cancer medicine. My work integrates digital pathology, medical imaging, and omics data to model tumour heterogeneity, treatment response, and clinical risk.

  • Digital pathology
  • Foundation models
  • Spatial & multimodal integration
  • Cancer genomics
  • Clinical risk modelling


Curriculum Vitae

Google Scholar
Publications

2,772 citations · h-index 18 · i10-index 25  (Google Scholar)


Hossein Farahani

Featured publications

2025

Machine Learning-Driven Histotype Diagnosis of Ovarian Carcinoma: Insights from the OCEAN AI ChallengeSubmitted

Asadi-Aghbolaghi, M.*, Farahani, H.*, Zhang, A. W.*, Khajegili Mirabadi, A.*, Akbari, A., Kim, S., Köbel, M., Karnezis, A., Bashashati, A.

Nature Medicine, 2025

GeneExpert: General-Purpose Representation Learning for Bulk RNA-Seq DataSubmitted

Maneshgar, B., Zhang, T. L. J., Farahani, H.†, Bashashati, A.†

Nature Biotechnology, 2025

Deep Learning-Based Analysis of Routine Histopathology Slides Predicts Response to PARP Inhibitors in High-Grade Serous Ovarian CancerUnder Review

Nakhli, R., Rhind, M., Leung, E., Farahani, H., et al.

Nature Communications, 2025

Histological and Molecular Determinants of Upgrade Risk in Prostate Cancers Eligible for Active SurveillanceSubmitted

Azadi, P., Arab, A., Suderman, J., Farahani, H., et al.

Nature Communications, 2025

2024

AI-Based Histopathology Image Analysis Reveals a Distinct Subset of Endometrial Cancers

Darbandsari, A.*, Farahani, H.*, Asadi, M.*, Wiens, M., Cochrane, D., Khajegili Mirabadi, A., Jamieson, A., Farnell, D., Ahmadvand, P., et al.

Nature Communications, 2024, 15(1), 4973

Volta: An Environment-Aware Contrastive Cell Representation Learning for Histopathology

Nakhli, R., Rich, K., Zhang, A., Darbandsari, A., Shenasa, E., Milne, K., McAlpine, J., Nelson, B., Gilks, C. B., Farahani, H.†, Bashashati, A.†

Nature Communications, 2024, 15(1), 3942

2017

E-scape: Interactive Visualization of Single-Cell Phylogenetics and Cancer Evolution

Smith, M. A., Nielsen, C. B., Chan, F. C., McPherson, A., Roth, A., Farahani, H., Machev, D., Steif, A., Shah, S. P.

Nature Methods, 2017, 14(6), 549–550

2015

Dynamics of Genomic Clones in Breast Cancer Patient Xenografts at Single-Cell Resolution

Eirew, P., Steif, A., Khattra, J., Ha, G., Yap, D., Farahani, H., Gelmon, K., Chia, S., Mar, C., Wan, A., et al.

Nature, 2015, 518(7539), 422–426

Multifocal Clonal Evolution Characterized Using Circulating Tumour DNA in a Case of Metastatic Breast Cancer

Murtaza, M., Dawson, S.-J., Pogrebniak, K., Rueda, O. M., Provenzano, E., Chin, S.-F., Marass, F., Gale, D., Shah, P., Farahani, H., Caldas, C., et al.

Nature Communications, 2015, 6(1), 8760

News

  • The OCEAN ovarian-carcinoma histotyping study, from the international UBC-OCEAN challenge, is under review at Nature Medicine.
  • GeneExpert, a general-purpose representation model for bulk RNA-seq, is under review at Nature Biotechnology.
  • Teaching BMEG 591T — Machine Learning in Medicine in Winter Term 2, 2026.

Grants & service

  • CCS Disruptive Innovation Grant — PRECISE (2025–2027). Co-applicant; PI: A. Bashashati. CAD $250,000.
  • Gynecologic Cancer Initiative — SPARK Award (2024–2026). Trainee applicant. CAD $20,000.
  • Co-Lead Organizer, UBC-OCEAN international Kaggle competition. Reviewer for Nature Communications, Nature Machine Intelligence, npj Digital Medicine, MICCAI, CVPR, NeurIPS, and ICML.

Get in touch

h.farahani@ubc.ca · School of Biomedical Engineering, University of British Columbia.