Dr Abidi’s laboratory works in the areas of virology, immunology, and viral oncology. The laboratory uses a wide range of bioinformatics (including mathematical modeling, machine learning, and Artificial Intelligence) and genetic, transcriptomic, and proteomic tool and approaches in their studies.  

His laboratory focuses on HIV molecular epidemiology, phylogenetics, and phylodynamics in different HIV key population groups and geographical regions such as Pakistan, Kenya, Afghanistan, and Kazakhstan. In addition to HIV, Dr Abidi also focuses on other viruses, such as HCV, HBV, RSV, Herpesviruses, and SARS-CoV-2, where he uses sequence data to drive inferences about viral evolution, and the emergence of drug and vaccine resistance mutations.

Dr Abidi’s laboratory also focuses on viral immunology studies, where the key research areas involve characterization of host response against viruses, identification of immune biomarkers for disease severity, and understating the relationship between microbiome, host immunity, and development of viral disease or viral infection-associated pathologies. Dr Abidi’s laboratory also uses sequence (along with mutational profiles) to develop approaches for designing effective drugs and vaccines against different viruses.

Dr Abidi’s laboratory also extensively studies the role of viral infections in the onset/progression of cancer. He especially focuses on the role of EBV in the progression of prostate cancer, where his laboratory has characterized EBV latency profiles in prostate cancer tissues, followed by the differential analysis of genetic, transcriptomic, and proteomic changes associated with EBV in prostate carcinoma.  

Dr Abidi’s teaching portfolio ranges from undergraduate and graduate teaching. In both forms, his focus is to enable students to build concepts and develop an understanding of the subject, rather than simply memorizing a topic. To achieve this goal, he actively relies on the use of technology, especially the use of animations, to explain difficult concepts, which makes it easy for the students to understand the concept as they are able to see the process being simulated in real-time. In addition, he has experimented with new teaching/learning tools in adult education that can help in effectively delivering important concepts to medical students. For example, he used films to teach empathy and ethics to medical students. The film-based course not only received very positive feedback from the students but also helped us in highlighting the use of cinematic films as a teaching/learning tool for adult education. This strategy was published in a revered international education journal (Abidi, et al. Canadian Journal for the Study of Adult Education, 2016). Furthermore, he has also successfully integrated new pedagogies and various mediums, such as Flip classroom, in his routine teaching with favorable outcomes. For example, he transformed a conventional Biochemistry LCF on memory and learning into an integrated (Biochemistry, Anatomy, Physiology and Pharmacology) session on memory and learning, where he taught students about “the Mozart effect”, the idea that listening to classical music (particularly Mozart) improves the brain functions, enhances memory and help with effects of Dementia. The session was well-received by the students. Additionally, in 2014, Dr Syed and Dr Abidi, in an effort to make education more accessible to the larger population, co-offered the first massive open online course (MOOC) on ‘Computer-Based Drug discovery’ from Pakistan. They went further to publish our experience on the first MOOC (Abidi et al. Current Issues in Emerging eLearning 2016), as well as provided a road map for offering MOOCs from a resource-limited country (Abidi, et al. Learning, Media and Technology, 2016). In 2022, he was awarded a SoTL grant to develop a new strategy to deliver theory and laboratory protocols in cell and molecular biology through the MOOC platform. This MOOC also received outstanding comments from the participants. His ‘outstanding contributions and academic pursuits in classroom teaching’ earned him the Outstanding Teachers Award in 2019 (Aga Khan University, Pakistan) and the Fellowship of Higher Education (UK) in 2022.