I am currently a postdoctoral research fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Mahmoud Pouladi. I aim to establish zebrafish models of various human neurodegenerative diseases and characterize their cellular and behavioral phenotypes, and eventually use them to assay for compounds that reverse degeneration seen in them.

Topic: Genetics of myelination in zebrafishPI: Dr. William S. TalbotFor my graduate work, I performed a forward genetic screen in zebrafish for genetic modifiers of myelination. Impairment in myelination is a feature in several neurodegenerative diseases, with multiple sclerosis being the most prominent one. Through my screen, I identified a novel transcription factor Znf16l that controls the formation of one pool of oligodendrocytes, distinct from ones whose formation are controlled by Notch3 (Sidik and Talbot, 2015). I also identified mutations in Rraga and Lamtor4, components of the Ragulator complex whose mutations lead to reductions in the numbers of microglia and oligodendrocytes through distinct mechanisms (Shen et al., 2016; Meireles et al., 2018).

Topic: Lineage restriction of stem cellsPI: Dr. Sai Kiang Lim