I received my Ph.D. in Molecular and Human Genetics under the supervision of Prof. Ashim Mukherjee from Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India. As a graduate student I got an opportunity to work on identification and functional characterization of novel interactors of Notch Signaling pathway in Drosophila melanogaster. As a post-doc in the Perrimon lab, I am interested to explore the mechanism of regulation of different signaling components and their cross-talk during development using molecular genetic approaches in Drosophila.

Before joining the Perrimon Lab, I conducted extensive research on the function of microRNAs, circRNAs, and tRNA fragments in cancer, neuronal development, and neurodegenerative diseases. This was during my time as a Ph.D. student, postdoc, and later as an Assistant Professor at Aarhus University in Denmark (karimrahimi.com). In the Perrimon Lab, I systematically investigate the effectiveness of CRISPR-based tools for high-throughput gene knockdown and functional studies, which include Cas13 and CRISPRi approaches. Additionally, I employ Nanopore long-read sequencing to explore how epigenetic factors and DNA methylation influence gene expression profiles in drosophila. I study methods to write and erase such modifications for subsequent functional studies.