Mohammad Zarei

Dr. Mohammad Zarei is currently working as a research scientist at the Virginia Seafood Agricultural Research and Extension Center - Virginia Tech. His work within the Future Foods Lab and Cellular Agriculture Initiative at the center focuses on waste valorization, converting agri-food wastes to value-added products, production of alternative proteins, protein hydrolysate, and bioactive peptides from various protein sources, including plant, animal, marine, and insect, using bioprocessing, fermentation and enzymatic approaches to produce value-added products, bio-ingredients, and bioactive compounds.

Before joining Virginia Tech, Mohammad served as a visiting scholar in the Department of Food Science at the University of Arkansas (August- December 2021). He worked as an assistant professor in the Faculty of Applied Sciences, University Technology MARA (2019-2021), Malaysia. He also served as a postdoctoral researcher in the Faculty of Food Science and Technology at the University Putra Malaysia (2016-19). His research focus was on the extraction, characterization, and identification of bioactive peptides from the plant, animal, and marine sources; application and incorporation of bioactive compounds in food systems; improvement of the bioaccessibility and bioavailability of bioactive compounds, as well as functional food and nutraceuticals, including isolation, characterization and biological activity of peptides derived from enzymatic hydrolysis of food proteins and their structure-activity relationships. He also served as an assistant professor in the Department of Food Science and Technology, Faculty of Agricultural and Natural Resources at Azad University in Kurdistan, Iran (2015-16).