Dr Mariam did her Masters in Chemistry with specialization in Biochemistry from University of the Punjab. She started her career as a Research Officer at the Centre of Excellence in Molecular Biology in March 2005. There, she performed sequencing and genotyping of DNA samples in the DNA Core Facility, which was the first such kind of high throughput sequencing/genotyping laboratory in Pakistan. In 2006, she was nominated by the Centre for training on Genetic analyzers by Applied Biosystems Inc., at Warrington, UK. Her expertise extends to synthesizing primers and probes, encompassing a wide range of molecular biology applications on DNA synthesizers.
In 2009, she was awarded the Indigenous Ph.D scholarship by the Higher Education Commission, Pakistan. During her Ph.D. at CEMB, Dr Mariam focused on the genetic aspects of asthma within the Pakistani population. She optimized a cost-effective method for SNP typing and sequencing of potential candidate genes, identifying Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms and haplotypes that predispose the population to asthma. In 2012, she attended an international workshop on “Bioinformatics: Database Mining and High Throughput Genomic Analyses” at COMSTECH, Islamabad. Utilizing bioinformatics tools such as Haploview, Plink, and HaploReg, Dr. Mariam proposed an epigenetic mechanism by which a specific SNP on 17q12 might contribute to asthma susceptibility in Pakistani population. Notably, in 2015, she was awarded a travel grant by the European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (EAACI), for presenting her research findings during a course on “Molecular and Lab Asthma” in Istanbul, Turkey. Her research findings have been published in reputable international journals.
Dr. Mariam possesses extensive expertise in genetic analyses, encompassing both dry lab and wet lab techniques for studying monogenic and complex diseases. Her skill set includes DNA sequencing, fragment analyses, and bioinformatic analyses utilizing tools such as R studio, PLINK, and Haploview. She has won two NRPU projects by Higher Education Commission Pakistan and is also a Collaborating Partner in an ongoing Project on Congenital Hypogonadotropic Hypogonadism by Swiss National Science Foundation (https://data.snf.ch/grants/grant/202612); SNSF Data Portal (snf.ch). she is actively involved in teaching these techniques, as well as Molecular Biology, Biotechnology and Medical Genetics at the M.Phil and PhD levels. In her role as an HEC approved PhD supervisor, Dr. Mariam has successfully supervised 15 M.Phil, 3 PhD, and 5 internship students in their research endeavors focused on the genetic association of various human diseases, including asthma, lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and congenital hypogonadotropic hypogonadism.