About Me
My curiosity in nature and biology started since I was growing up in a farmer family and small village in my motherland "Kurdistan". This interest deepened over time, and I found myself on an exciting journey teaching general biology as a high school teacher. Afterward, I earned a Master of Science degree in Biotechnology. Thereafter, I continued my education and achieved a PhD in "Molecular Biology and Genetics" in 2016 from Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark.
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Throughout my PhD studies, I focused on the role of microRNA miR-302 cluster in maintaining the stemness state of both regular and cancerous stem cells in a breast cancer mouse model. In particular, I focused on understanding the transcriptional regulation of the miR-302 host gene. Additionally, I utilized the CRISPR tools to examine the in vivo expression profile of miR-302.
After my Ph.D. I got three years postdoc position at the lab of Prof. Jorgen Kjems at Aarhus University. I followed with an assistant professor position at the Department of molecular biology and Genetics until I moved to Harvard Medical School in October 2022. During this time, I focused on circular RNA studies, including biogenesis and their function in neuronal development. I also developed two methods for global and panel-adjusted Nanopore long-read sequencing of circRNAs and studied their isoforms and how differentiate from their linear host RNAs. I used CRISPR Cas13 and developed an approach to design and employ synthetic sgRNAs for functional assays of circRNAs. Additionally, I made a synthetic circRNA for efficient sponging of miR-134 with therapeutic goals for epilepsy treatment. Circular RNAs are more stable than linear RNA molecules which make them good candidates for use as therapeutic agents in the near future.
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I have also worked on developing a synthetic gene circuit to overexpress GDNF in response to the up-regulation of tRNA fragments to prevent epilepsy conditions in the human brain.
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In October 2022, I joined the lab of Prof. Norbert Perrimon as a Research Associate in Genetics at Harvard Medical School In Boston. In the Perrimon's lab, I systematically investigate the effectiveness of CRISPR-based tools for high-throughput gene knockdown and functional studies, which include Cas13 and CRISPRi approaches. Additionally, I employ Nanopore long-read sequencing to explore how epigenetic factors and DNA methylation influence gene expression profiles in Drosophila. I study methods to write and erase such modifications for subsequent functional studies. ​
Single-cell genomics is another fascinating area in biology and integrating more metadata at the single-cell level would be extraordinary, such as long-read RNA isoforms, small RNAs, DNA sequencing and epigenome informations. I am interested to design and develop new methods for single-cell long-read RNA and DNA sequencing. Recently, I have collaborated on projects to study the full length RNA isoforms at the single cell resolution and at the tissue specific level and also cancerous versus normal samples. I have developed deep learning approaches to use the potential power of transformer technology for understanding the complexity of biological and biomedical metadata. Additionally, I am interested in AI-ML for better understanding the complexity of biological pathways and gene regulations.
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Additionally, I have a strong experiences in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI-ML) and Natural Language processing (NLP) not only for better understanding the complexity of biological pathways, but I tried to become an expert AI-NLP-LLM at the first place to serve my mother language which is Kurdish and all other languages in particular those which are facing a new type of assimilation in this AI age! I believe that every language is a precious heritage of humanity, deserving fair protection and preservation; they enrich each other through their unique expressions and the power of diversity, and any form of assimilation and discrimination that threatens their existence should be seriously opposed.