Dr. Salimi is a translational physician-scientist in Dr. Daniel Raftery’s lab and a K01 award grantee from the National Institute on Aging. Her research focuses on biological aging as an underlying mechanism of chronic diseases, employing omics tools, cell cultures, and animal models to validate findings from human aging studies. Dr. Salimi works on the development of health algorithms across species to capture aging processes, including PathoClock, PathoAge, PhysioClock, and PhysioAge in rodent models, as well as the Human Health Octo Tool (HOT) to assess human health. She chose the University of Washington to further her research in aging using “omics” approaches and to benefit from the contributions to understanding mechanisms of aging achieved by the Nathan Shock Center of Excellence in the Basic Biology of Aging, the Northwest Metabolomics Research Center and the Mitochondria and Metabolism Center. Dr. Salimi aspires to make significant contributions to population health and health equity by translating scientific discoveries from the bench to real-world human health applications.

Dr. Salimi completed her postdoctoral fellowship and training at the University of Maryland and served as a Special Volunteer at the National Institute on Aging Intramural Research Program. She decided to move to Seattle after attending statistical genetics workshops at UW’s Summer Institute in Statistical Genetics.

Dr. Salimi appreciates the natural beauty of Washington State and spends her free time hiking, biking, writing modern poetry, and playing chess.

Dr. Salimi’s research focuses on biological aging as an underlying mechanism of chronic diseases, employing omics tools, cell cultures, and animal models to validate findings from human aging studies.  Dr. Salimi
works on the development of health algorithms across species to capture aging processes, including PathoClock, PathoAge, PhysioClock, and PhysioAge in rodent models, as well as the Human Health Octo Tool (HOT) to assess human health and the related genomics to delineate the underlying mechanisms of precision health.

Education

1. PathoClock and PhysioClock in mice recapitulate human multimorbidity and heterogeneous aging. S Salimi, C Pettan-Brewer, W Ladiges
Aging pathobiology and therapeutics 3 (4), 107

2. Measuring biological aging in humans: A quest.
Ferrucci L, Gonzalez-Freire M, Fabbri E, Simonsick E, Tanaka T, Moore Z, Salimi S, Sierra F, de Cabo R. Aging Cell. 2020 Feb;19(2):e13080.

3. Inflammation and Trajectory of Renal Function in Community-Dwelling Older Adults. Salimi S, Shardell MD, Seliger SL, Bandinelli S, Guralnik JM, Ferrucci L. J Am Geriatr Soc. 2018 Apr;66(4):804-811.

4. Whole Genome Sequencing Based Analysis of Inflammation Biomarkers in the Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) Consortium. Jiang MZ, Gaynor SM, Li X, Van Buren E, Stilp A, Buth E, Wang FF, Manansala R, Gogarten SM, Li Z, Polfus LM, Salimi S, Bis JC, Pankratz N, Yanek LR, Durda P, Tracy RP, Rich SS, Rotter JI, Mitchell BD, Lewis JP, Psaty BM, Pratte KA, Silverman EK, Kaplan RC, Avery C, North K, Mathias RA, Faraday N, Lin H, Wang B, Carson AP, Norwood AF, Gibbs RA, Kooperberg C, Lundin J, Peters U, Dupuis J, Hou L, Fornage M, Benjamin EJ, Reiner AP, Bowler RP, Lin X, Auer PL, Raffield LM; NHLBI Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) Consortium, TOPMed Inflammation Working Group.
Hum Mol Genet. 2024 May 15:ddae050

5. Allelic Heterogeneity at the CRP Locus Identified by Whole-Genome Sequencing in Multi-ancestry Cohorts.
Raffield LM, Iyengar AK, Wang B, Gaynor SM, Spracklen CN, Zhong X, Kowalski MH, Salimi S, Polfus LM, Benjamin EJ, Bis JC, Bowler R, Cade BE, Choi WJ, Comellas AP, Correa A, Cruz P, Doddapaneni H, Durda P, Gogarten SM, Jain D, Kim RW, Kral BG, Lange LA, Larson MG, Laurie C, Lee J, Lee S, Lewis JP, Metcalf GA, Mitchell BD, Momin Z, Muzny DM, Pankratz N, Park CJ, Rich SS, Rotter JI, Ryan K, Seo D, Tracy RP, Viaud-Martinez KA, Yanek LR, Zhao LP, Lin X, Li B, Li Y, Dupuis J, Reiner AP, Mohlke KL, Auer PL; TOPMed Inflammation Working Group; NHLBI Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) Consortium. Am J Hum Genet. 2020 Jan 2;106(1):112-120

6. Clonal haematopoiesis and risk of chronic liver disease.
Wong WJ, Emdin C, Bick AG, Zekavat SM, Niroula A, Pirruccello JP, Dichtel L, Griffin G, Uddin MM, Gibson CJ, Kovalcik V, Lin AE, McConkey ME, Vromman A, Sellar RS, Kim PG, Agrawal M, Weinstock J, Long MT, Yu B, Banerjee R, Nicholls RC, Dennis A, Kelly M, Loh PR, McCarroll S, Boerwinkle E, Vasan RS, Jaiswal S, Johnson AD, Chung RT, Corey K, Levy D, Ballantyne C; NHLBI TOPMed Hematology Working Group; Ebert BL, Natarajan P.
Nature. 2023 Apr;616(7958):747-754.

7. Salimi S, Hamlyn JM. COVID-19 and Crosstalk With the Hallmarks of Aging. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci; 2020 Jun 16;glaa149.