Parisa Yousefpour earned her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University, where she trained in protein engineering, biomaterials, and drug delivery. She subsequently completed her postdoctoral training at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT as an NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA Postdoctoral Fellow and Ludwig Postdoctoral Fellow, focusing on synthetic biology and immunoengineering for cancer immunotherapy and vaccine development for infectious diseases.

Her laboratory at Columbia University develops next-generation biomolecular therapies by integrating protein engineering, synthetic biology, biomaterials, and biomolecular engineering. The group engineers RNA- and protein-based therapeutic platforms with an emphasis on controlling when and where they act, as well as how they interact with endogenous biological systems, including the immune system, to improve therapeutic efficacy, durability, and safety.