University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa- PhD, Biomedical Science Program Cancer Biology and Free Radical and Radiation Biology
- Master's, Cancer Biology Thesis on GPx1 and the response of colon cancer to chemotherapy. Cancer Biology Fellow.
What I work on
My research focuses on glioblastoma, one of the most aggressive brain cancers. I study how immune cells inside and around brain tumors may help shape tumor progression, with a particular focus on macrophages. Macrophages are immune cells that normally help clean up damaged tissue, but in cancer they can sometimes be redirected by the tumor and become part of a supportive tumor environment.
A major focus of my work is understanding how these macrophages handle iron. Iron is essential for normal cell function, but in tumors it can also influence inflammation, tissue damage, immune suppression, and treatment response. Using computational biology and publicly available patient datasets, I study whether macrophages in glioblastoma show a specific iron-recycling program and where this program appears within the tumor.
Before this I spent two years at the bench on colorectal cancer. I built patient-derived organoids from human tumor tissue and used them to test how one enzyme, GPx1, changes the way a tumor responds to chemotherapy. Earlier still, I worked on the computational side, building signaling models and helping to build a simulation platform for cancer research. More on my research.
Education
Lahore University of Management Sciences
Lahore, Pakistan- Bachelor's, Biology Graduated with distinction. Thesis on autophagy regulation in colorectal cancer.
- Research Intern and Undergraduate Research Lead Biomedical Informatics and Engineering Research Laboratory
- Teaching Assistant Departments of Life Sciences and Mathematics