To whom it my concern,

This is to recommend Ms. Leila Pirhaji, who is applying for the PhD program of Systems Biology of
complex diseases at ETH University.

Leila is one of the most talented students in Iran, who was placed 10 th among more than 500,000 students
in the “National University Entrance Exam” in the year 2004. She was also selected as the best
undergraduate student of the year at department of Biotechnology, University of Tehran in 2005 and 2007.
Besides her great performance in the University, her tireless working and high level of intelligence were
instrumental for her to have several publications as an undergraduate student.

Leila has been working in my group at Royan Institute since 2008. Considering her strong academic
background and research experience, she was given the chance to collaborative in our omics projects as
well as initiating independent projects. She started her work here with analyzing the microarray data of
human embryonic stem cells during differentiation to embryoid body. She performed the comparative
analysis such as different clustering methods using proteomics and transcriptomics data to distinguished
different expression patterns of mRNA level and corresponding protein level during embryoid body
formation (Proteomics, 9, 4859–4870, 2009). In another successful collaboration, she analyzed
proteomics data of monkey embryonic stem cell during differentiation to embryoid body. She inferred
related protein-protein interaction network of the proteins using different databases and text mining
approach and found the properties of its hub proteins by comparative analysis of protein level during
differentiation (Journal of Proteome Research, 8, 1527–1539, 2009).

She is an exceptionally intelligent, goal-oriented and self-motivated person. As her MSc thesis, she
developed a new algorithm for prediction of gene regulatory networks from microarray data which
outperforms the current algorithms. She proposed the probabilistic model to maximize the score of the
sub graphs in the primitive network based on the information theory approach. She is currently writing a
manuscript for the results of her research project using her great ability in writhing which is clear, well-
organized and concise.

Her outstanding achievements in our department gave her the opportunity to get a fellowship from Royan
institute to perform research in the Group of Prof. Ruedi Aebersold at The Institute for Molecular Systems
Biology (IMSB), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH), Switzerland for six months. She
successfully accomplished a project about mathematical modeling of protein-protein interaction networks
from high throughput quantitative mass spectrometry data and presented her findings as an oral
presentation in the “Royan 5th International Congress on Stem Cell Biology & Technology”.

At the personal level, Leila is a well disciplined, industrious student and one of the most pleasant people
to work with. Leila’s responsibility toward her work and her enthusiasms for the training of the new
students in the group is exceptional.

I consider Leila as one of the best students I have ever had with exceptional talent, hard working and
intelligence for scientific work and strongly recommend her for your PhD program.

With best regards,

Hosseini Salekdeh

Ghasem Hosseini Salekdeh, PhD

President of Iranian Proteomics Society (www.proteomics.ir)
Council member of Asian Ociana HUPO (www.aohupo.org)
Head of Department of Molecular Systems Biology
Royan Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Technology (www.royaninstitute.org)
Banihashem Sq., Resalat Avenue, P. O. Box 19395-4644, Tehran, Iran
And
Systems Biology Department,
Agricultural Biotechnology Research Institute of Iran (ABRII) (www.abrii.ac.ir),
Tel: +98-21-22172330; Fax: +98-21-22414532
E-mail: Salekdeh@Royaninstitute.org
hsalekdeh@abrii.ac.ir