Atefeh Rabiee, PhD

Tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Thomas J. Long School of Pharmacy, University of the Pacific.

Dr. Rabiee is a cell and molecular biologist whose research centers on adipocyte biology, metabolic flexibility, mitochondrial adaptation, and the mechanisms that connect adipose tissue dysfunction to cardiometabolic disease.

Her scientific path has consistently focused on understanding how fat cells acquire, maintain, and remodel their identity. Her doctoral work examined transcriptional regulation and post-translational control of early adipogenesis. At the University of Copenhagen, she progressed from Postdoctoral Researcher (2014–2018) to Assistant Professor (2018–2020), while also conducting visiting research at Stanford University School of Medicine from 2017–2020 in the laboratories of Dr. Mary Teruel and Dr. Peter K. Jackson.

At the University of the Pacific, she established the Rabiee Laboratory to investigate disease-specific adipocyte biology, with particular emphasis on lipedema, mitochondrial dysfunction, adipocyte metabolic inflexibility, and adipose tissue communication with vascular and tumor microenvironments.