Marwa Zafarullah

I'm a scientist by training and have been in my field for more than 10 years. I started at UC Davis and now work with the Stanford School of Medicine as a neuroscientist. My work is very heavily involved in research and communicating the science. On a typical day, I'm working on the wet lab side - designing experiments, conducting experiments, and analyzing high computational data. I also spend significant time communicating with different diverse teams, collaborating across different domains, and going out to conferences and different meetings to communicate my science with other scientists from other institutes and even from other countries. I received my master's and PhD in genetics and genomics from the University of California, Davis, where I was trained at the UC Davis Mind Institute, which is one of the most executed hubs for neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative studies in the world. I was the only Pakistani so far who graduated with both master's and PhD from UC Davis's Genetics program because of its highly competitive nature. Currently, I'm the only Pakistani neuroscientist at Stanford School of Medicine. Beyond my research, I serve as Vice President for the Association for Women in Science in Palo Alto and as an ambassador for Bioscience Careers at Stanford University. I'm heavily involved in mentoring women all over the world in my limited capacity, communicating with young girls and college students, and I'm invited by different colleges to spend time voluntarily speaking with students, helping them understand different career avenues, especially how to combine neuroscience and AI. I've been involved in organizing major events at Stanford, including serving as lead organizer for Stanford's very first Family Festival, which was attended by more than 500 scholars.