Professional Career

I earned my Bachelor’s degree in Bioinformatics from the International Islamic University in Pakistan. Following that, I moved to Turkey, where I completed my Ph.D. in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Bilkent University in September 2017. My doctoral research focused on identifying prognostic and diagnostic biomarkers for estrogen receptor-negative breast cancer subtypes using bioinformatics approaches. This involved analyzing transcriptomic datasets (both microarray and RNA-seq) and developing automated data analysis tools using Shiny web applications. 

After completing my Ph.D., I served as an Assistant Professor at the National University of Medical Sciences in Pakistan from April 2018 to August 2021. During this period, I also worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, University of Texas, USA (November 2019 – October 2020). There, my research focused on developing tools for metabolomics and proteomics data analysis using mass spectrometry and reverse phase protein array (RPPA) technology. 

In September 2021, I relocated to the Netherlands and joined the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI) as a postdoctoral fellow (October 2021 – May 2023). At NKI, my work centered on DNA sequencing data analysis and the development of automated pipelines for processing various genomics datasets. Driven by a growing interest in machine learning, I accepted a temporary postdoctoral position at Utrecht University’s Department of Social Sciences in August 2023, where I worked for 10 months. My role involved developing a method to impute missing data using the XGBoost machine learning algorithm. 

Most recently, in February 2025, I began a new postdoctoral position at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), where I am currently continuing my research.