| research
Mehreen Zaka
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Mehreen Zaka is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Roux Institute, working with Prof. Diomedes Logothetis from Bouve College of Health Sciences at Northeastern University. Zaka was a Postdoctoral fellow (2020-2022) at Bahcesehir University, School of Medicine, Istanbul, Turkey where she worked with Prof. Dr. Serdar Durdagi. During that period, she focused on identification of small molecule inhibitors against Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM) by applying in silico (virtual screening and machine learning based approaches) and in vitro methods. Prior to that, she spent a year as a visiting faculty member at QAU’s Department of Biotechnology in Islamabad.
She earned her doctorate in Biotechnology from QAU, Islamabad, Pakistan where she worked in plant cell culture lab led by Prof. Dr. Bilal Haider Abbasi. She received her M.Phil. degree in Biotechnology from Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan and her bachelor’s degree in Bioinformatics from International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan. During her Ph.D. studies, she received TUBITAK research fellowship and conducted her research as an international exchange student in Durdagi Research Group at Bahcesehir University, School of Medicine, Istanbul, Turkey. She received IRSIP fellowship from Pakistan and worked as a short term exchange student in Logothetis Research Lab, Bouve College of Health Sciences at Northeastern University.
Zaka’s research interests include Computer Aided Drug Design (CADD) and the application of machine learning and AI based approaches in drug design. Her research interests at the Roux institute remain the same: applying computational methods to ion channels and identify activators and inhibitors using virtual screening-based approaches, fragment-based drug design, and molecular dynamics simulations.