Building blocks of life
A summer internship in a research laboratory further instilled Dr Shakeel’s passion for science.
“I love conducting experiments, and the excitement of doing something new every day,” he said.
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A summer internship in a research laboratory further instilled Dr Shakeel’s passion for science.
“I love conducting experiments, and the excitement of doing something new every day,” he said.
“I’m also a visual learner; if I can see something, I can understand it, and that’s what structural biology is all about.”
Dr Shakeel established his own laboratory at WEHI in structural biology to study the complex nature of DNA.
“Everything comes down to DNA because it carries all the instructions needed to direct the activity of every cell in the body,” he said.
After completing a double master’s degree, Dr Shakeel worked in Mumbai for a biopharmaceutical company, then undertook a PhD in Finland before moving to the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB), Cambridge.
“At LMB it is very open, there are no internal walls, and you can approach anyone else in the institute to work with. It’s a very collaborative environment. WEHI has a similar philosophy, which was one of the things that really attracted me to work here.”