drraheel@gmail.com
After obtaining an M.Sc. in Biochemistry from the University of Peshawar, I worked as a Scientific Officer at the National Institute of Health, Islamabad, Pakistan. I then proceeded to USA to work towards my Ph.D in the Department of Biochemistry Molecular Biology, University of North Texas, Denton, Texas, USA.
During my stay in the US I worked as a Research Assistant at the Department of Biochemistry, University of North Texas and as a Research Associate at the Department of Microbiology & Immunology, Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine, Fort Worth, Texas, USA. After completing my Ph.D. I came back to Pakistan and joined Dr. A. Q. Khan Research Laboratories as a Senior Scientific Officer and was subsequently promoted to the position of Principal Scientific Officer. From 1998 to 2001 I worked for a while, with Dr. Chris Tyler-Smith at the Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK in the lab of Prof. E.M. Southern. In 2002 I joined Shifa College of Medicine as Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and in 2003 was promoted to the post of Associate Professor & also appointed as the Director of PCR Labs. In 2004 I was appointed as the Research Director of Shifa College of Medicine. In 2005 I joined COMSATS University as Professor of Biosciences and also served as the Chair of the Department of Biosciences till 2008 when I was appointed as the Dean of the Faculty of Sciences. In the meanwhile I am continuing to serve as the Research & PCR Lab Director at the Shifa College of Medicine.
My training has been in Chemical pathology, Biochemistry, Biomedical & Genetic Engineering. I have completed courses in DNA Cloning & Sequencing from the University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, United Kingdom. In Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) Applications from the American Type Culture Collection (ATCC), Rockville, Maryland, USA., a course in operation of the DNA sequencer Model 377 from Applied Biosystems, A Division of Perkin Elmer American, at the Foster City, USA and a fourth course in DNA Sequencer Training from the Beckman centre, High wycombe, UK.
My research specialization includes Enzymology, Population & Molecular Genetics and Molecular Pathology. I am particularly interested in searching for the molecular basis of all forms of inherited diseases in the Pakistani populations and my research group, comprising of 4 PhD, 5 MS students, 4 Assistant Professors and 3 Foreign Professors, is currently working on a number of different projects along these lines.