Samir studied Biomedical Science at The University of Sheffield (UK), where he carried out research on asthma-associated proteins and their regulation of human mast cell function. He followed this with an MSc(Res) in Translational Oncology, which included a research project on developing an in vivo model of castration-resistant prostate cancer in zebrafish. In 2015, he carried out his PhD at The University of Sheffield (UK), supervised by Prof. Ilaria Bellantuono and Prof. Stephen Renshaw. During these four years he developed a novel tool to study cellular senescence in vivo by making a transgenic zebrafish for the gene p21 (cdkn1a) (Morsli et al., 2023). Following his PhD, he was awarded a grant from the MRC’s Proximity to Discovery Fund to test senolytics in the cdkn1a:GFP zebrafish model.

In 2024 he has joined the Pietrocola lab in 2024 as a senior postdoc at the Karolinska Institutet, further exploring the mechanisms underpinning senescence, cancer, and immunity.