Zahra is a PhD. Candidate in the Infectious Diseases and Immunity program at UC Berkeley. She received her B.S. in Cell Biology and Genetics from the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD). While at UMD, Zahra spent two years at the NIH/NIAID where she helped optimize the early models of the TB portals program, which is now a robust international consortium of tuberculosis patient case files from the developing world. Shortly after graduating, she began working as a research assistant at the University of Maryland School of Dentistry, where she studied canonical and non-canonical mediators or methicillin resistance in Staphylococcus aureus. Afterward, she moved to the Uniformed Services University where she worked on developing novel anti-biofilm therapeutics, specifically focusing on targeted phage therapy, against clinical Enterococcus faecalis isolates. Her dissertation research in the Welch lab focuses on understanding the spatiotemporal localization dynamics and regulation of the actin motility mediators RickA and Sca2 in Rickettsia parkeri.