Meet one of our 2026 Fellows, Marwa Zafarullah, PhD! She is a postdoctoral fellow at Leland Stanford Junior University in Palo Alto, CA.

Dr. Zafarullah has over eight years of experience in biomarker discovery and multi-omics research, with more than sixteen publications and over $150,000 in competitive funding. As a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University under Dr. Day, Dr. Zafarullah is gaining advanced expertise in multi-omics approaches to CNS dysfunction, biomarker identification, and therapeutic development in myotonic dystrophy (DM).

This fellowship is a key step in her transition to independence, enabling her to strengthen her scientific leadership, deepen her expertise in myotonic dystrophy, and build an independent research program focused on improving patient outcomes. Her project “Proteogenomic Profiling of DM1 For Identifying CNS Biomarkers for Disease Activity and Therapeutics” will identify cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers that reflect DM1 brain dysfunction using a proteogenomic approach, linking misexpressed proteins in brain tissue to protein fragments in spinal fluid.

Click here to learn more about MDF's research funding opportunities and prior grant recipients.