In 2004, he joined the University of British Columbia as a professor in the Department of Cellular and Physiological Sciences at the Life Sciences Institute.[6]
Research contributions
Nabi's research spans a range of topics in cell biology with application to cancer metastasis and viral infections such as Zika and SARS-CoV-2.[7] His early work identified the Gp78 receptor of Autocrine motility factor during his graduate studies, later identified as an endoplasmic reticulum-associated E3 ubiquitin ligase. His recent work has identified a role for Gp78 in regulation of basal mitophagy, production of reactive oxygen species and a distinct class of ribosome-studded mitochondria-endoplasmic reticulum contacts (riboMERCs).[8] He has studied cellular domains including Lipid raft, caveolae, non-caveolar caveolin-1 scaffolds, and the galectin lattice, elucidating their regulation of cancer cell signaling and migration.[9] His recent focus involves applying weakly supervised computational machine learning approaches to super-resolution microscopy for biological discovery, applying network analysis to single molecule microscopy to identify non-caveolar scaffolds and developing sub-pixel super-resolution approaches to detect mitochondria-endoplasmic reticulum contact sites.[10]
Awards and service
Nabi is currently the Associate Editor for Biochemistry Society Transactions. He received the CPS Researcher of the Year Award from the University of British Columbia in 2008 and the Ambassador Award from the Cancer Research Society in 2017. He has also served in leadership roles such as Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board for the Cancer Research Society and Founding Member of the School of Biomedical Engineering at the University of British Columbia.[1]