My research activity includes three major branches of natural products science, chemical ecology, pharmacognosy and phytochemistry. I began my research with identification of secondary metabolites in terrestrial plants, including analyses of essential oils by GC-MS and 13C NMR. During my Ph.D. and afterwards I purified several novel diterpenoids from different Euphorbia plants and elucidate their structures by different spectroscopy methods. During my postdoctoral research and also as an assistant professor, I have applied antimicrobial and antioxidant bioassays to separate bioactive compounds from plants and then identify them by different spectroscopy methods including 1 and 2D-NMR. In Japan, my research focused on the role of secondary metabolites in plant-herbivore interactions. And finally in Jena, at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology (MPICE), I have learned how to apply modern techniques of molecular ecology to this field.

I and my collaborators have isolated and identified several novel terpenoids with enzyme inhibitory, antibacterial, antifungal, and anti-herbivore activity from Iranian, Indian, Japanese and American terrestrial plants. I have isolated some novel naphthoquinones and flavonoids with antioxidant properties and analyzed essential oils of several plants. Recently in the MPICE, I have used virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) to investigate the defensive role of terpenoids in Nicotiana attenuata against its specialized herbivore, Manduca sexta. I have also used this molecular method to probe the biosynthesis of terpenoids by identifying and silencing individual genes believed to be involved in particular synthetic pathways. Another area of my research involves searching for evidence of allelopathic roles played by secondary metabolites exuded from the roots of A. tridentata in response to N. attenuata. We examined different extracts of A. tridentata roots and developed a new bioassay to test the allelopathic potential of plant secondary metabolites.