Fadi Khalaf, a PhD candidate in Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences and MIRA Trainee, is the inaugural recipient of the Samit & Reshma Sharma Scholarship, created to advance leading edge research that supports healthy aging across Canada. His project, Elucidating the Relationship Between Post Burn Hypermetabolism and Epigenetic Aging, explores how severe burn injuries induce biological changes that mirror, and may accelerate the aging process, and how aging in turn influences the physiological response to burn injury.
“Older adults who experience major burns often face the poorest outcomes in critical care,” says Khalaf. “Understanding why that is the case on a cellular level, and how that impacts clinical care will help us develop pathways to support better recovery, resilience and long-term health.”
Supervised by Marc Jeschke in the Department of Surgery, Khalaf’s research focuses on hypermetabolism, a state where the body burns far more energy than usual as it responds to trauma. This intense energy use can lead to chronic inflammation and changes linked with the accelerated aging of cells.
To understand these changes, Khalaf uses advanced tools to examine how burn injuries and aging influence genes, proteins and fats. This work has already yielded multiple high impact publications in journals such as Nature Reviews Endocrinology, Metabolism, and Aging and Disease as well as fostering national and international collaborations bridging work in metabolism, trauma biology and geroscience.
Established in 2024 by the Samit & Reshma Sharma Foundation, the award celebrates McMaster’s renowned strengths in aging research and supports graduate students who demonstrate academic and research excellence to pursue projects with the great potential to create real, practical impact on health and aging.
Alongside his research, Khalaf serves as Vice President External of the Health Sciences Graduate Student Association, advocating for trainee wellbeing, mentorship and knowledge sharing across the research community.
