I wanted to regrow a fingertip.I started with acne scars.
Move your cursor through the words.
I'm Muneeb Shahzad, a biotechnology graduate from the University of Central Punjab in Lahore. I work across the wet lab and computation in regenerative biology, and outside the lab I organize events, run student ventures and help people share their science.
What set me on this path: in my sixth semester I pitched regrowing a human fingertip with stem cells, axolotl genes and 3D-printed scaffolds. I was told it was too advanced for an undergraduate. I couldn't let go of the question underneath it: why does an axolotl regrow a limb while we scar?
How I'm pursuing it: I form a hypothesis, test it, and publish what fails beside what works. So far that means a defended two-part wound-healing system (in vitro), five computational studies on regeneration, aging and a rare myelin disease, and a digital twin that scores diseased cells against a healthy baseline.
Researcher first, and also an event organizer, a science communicator and a student-venture operator. I turn my research into worlds you can walk through.
Six studies. Five you can walk through.
Each one is an interactive 3D world. Scroll through it, drag the model, hover any part, and read what I found, including what I didn't.
Lumora
A serum and hydrogel patch for acne scars, tested in vitro. Walk from the skin surface to the collagen pathway.
Open the 3D worldRegeneration vs scarring
Mouse digit tips and skin wounds: four shared genes, and a bigger network that flagged Gja1.
Open the 3D worldBioelectricity
Simulating cell voltage after a wound. The honest result was a null.
Open the 3D worldAging
Does mitochondria and nucleus drifting out of balance switch off regeneration? Tissue-specific, and NAMPT stands out.
Open the 3D worldPLP1 and the Twin
371 disease variants sorted by mechanism and matched to therapies, plus a digital twin that scores diseased cells against a healthy baseline and says so when it has no data.
Open the 3D worldDrug design for pulmonary fibrosis
In silico screen motivated by lung disease in textile workers. Validated ITGAV as a fibrosis switch and shortlisted curcumin by docking.
Open on GitHubBeyond the research: the electron transport chain
In a mitochondrion, an electron hops from carrier to carrier and charges the cell. That is how I move through activities: each one charges the next. Scroll and follow the electron.
Lab Manager Intern
UCP Biotechnology LabRan and guided practical sessions for 34 students in the molecular biotechnology lab: DNA extraction from human blood, animal, bacterial and plant sources, gel electrophoresis, primer design and PCR, and protein extraction and analysis. Also kept daily lab operations and ongoing student research projects moving.
Social Media Manager
Department of Biotechnology, UCPThree years of content and platform strategy for the department. My favorite move: proposing and launching posts where students tell their own research stories in their own voices, on the official department pages. I do not tell their stories. I hand them the microphone.
In Silico Drug Design for Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis
10th Biotech Final Year Projects Display (Bioinformatics Posters and Job Interaction Fair), UCPPresented ITGAV as a fibrosis switch and curcumin as the leading docked candidate.
Lumora, a two-part regenerative wound-healing system
11th Biotech Final Year Projects Display, UCPPresented the priming serum and the hydrogel patch as a poster and a product.
Participant, ICHEST
2nd International Conference on Emerging Horizons in Science and TechnologyTook part in the 2nd International Conference on Emerging Horizons in Science and Technology.
2nd place, poster competition
Department of Biotechnology, UCPPlaced second for a poster on fermentation strategy and bioreactor design for fruit roll-up production.
Startup Pop-up
Takhleeq Problem Solving Institute and IEC, UCPA month-long pop-up backing 25+ student startups, so students could earn real profit and feel what running a business demands. I helped design the space, ran social media and promotion, and supported event management.
OOTA (Out of Thin Air) Game Jam
Takhleeq Problem Solving Institute, The Games Collective Pakistan and IECPart of the organizing team for two editions of OOTA, Pakistan's largest game jam. Participants built games from art materials instead of digital tools, which pushed everyone to think beyond the textbook. I handled social media and promotion.
IEC Core Team
Innovation and Entrepreneurship Club, UCPTwo tenures: People and Culture Head first, then Creative Head. I led event design and collaborations with Takhleeq Problem Solving Institute and other societies.
TAAKRA Creative Subcore
UCP's annual inter-university festivalCreative Subcore Team Member for UCP's largest annual festival, which hosts 30+ universities across multiple competitions. Won the Best Subcore Team Member award.
Fasleh and Chuski
Student-run food startupsOperations, outreach and marketing for both startups. I managed budgeting for Fasleh and designed the packaging for Chuski.
1st International Seminar on Advances in Biotechnology
Department of Biotechnology, UCPHelped organize the seminar, themed Wheat Biotechnology and Molecular Breeding, with Department of Biotechnology faculty.
Allah Walay Trust
Food distributionFood distribution volunteer: about 500 people a day, over a 10-day drive.
Alkhidmat Foundation
Pakistan Young Heroes awards seminarHelped manage the seminar honoring Pakistanis with international achievements.
Rizq Society
With IbtadaVolunteered in a one-day food drive with Ibtada, and ran educational and activity-based sessions for underprivileged children.
The receipts
Failure modes, controls and limitations, logged as I hit them.
My proposal to regenerate a human fingertip, using stem-cell-derived progenitors, axolotl regeneration genes and 3D-printed scaffolds, was judged beyond undergraduate scope: no stem cell facility or cell lines on campus.
Re-scoped to scar biology: the same regeneration-versus-fibrosis question, tractable with hydrogel formulation in vitro plus in silico analysis.
Rapid CaCl2 addition caused uncontrolled ionic crosslinking of alginate (egg-box junctions) and heterogeneous lumps.
Dropwise addition gave uniform gelation and a reproducible hydrogel.
L-ascorbic acid underwent oxidative degradation in the serum.
Reduced oxygen exposure and stored it in amber glass to limit oxidation and photodegradation.
Two matrikine peptides were unaffordable to assay empirically.
Screened them by molecular docking (AutoDock Vina) and labeled the output as predicted binding, not measured activity.
BETSE simulations showed no statistically significant shift in Vmem under default parameters.
Diagnosed a mismatch between perturbation magnitude and window versus the wound-response phase, and reported it as a methodological finding, not as evidence against gap junction or ion channel involvement.
The pre-registered 4-gene classifier did not exceed its permutation null (p = 0.078).
Reported it as non-significant, in a separate tier from the exploratory 155-gene classifier (permutation p = 0.020), with overfitting risk stated explicitly.
The skin dataset (GSE186527) had only 3 pooled libraries per group, too few for inferential statistics.
Reported descriptive differential-expression rankings, not significance claims.
56 of 85 misfolding candidates were structurally mild by FoldX (ΔΔG ≤ 1.5 kcal/mol), leaving their mechanism unresolved.
Left them unassigned pending functional validation instead of forcing a class.
Some conditions have no reference data to score against.
The twin abstains and reports "no data" instead of extrapolating.
How I work
Five habits that show up in every project above.
Ask something that can fail, from every angle
I write the question so a null result is still an answer, then I attack it from every side. In Lumora I did not only ask what would prime and heal the skin. I asked about the wound's environmental conditions, like moisture and pH. That question is why a patch exists: a hydrogel that gives skin the microenvironment it needs to heal.
Try to break the answer
I stress-test every result: permutation nulls, held-out data and cross-dataset replication. The PLP1 twin was cross-validated on one human dataset and tested on a held-out one. If a finding survives my attempts to kill it, I trust it. If not, I report that.
Show the receipts
Every claim carries its limitation. Predictions are labeled as predictions, uncertain variants stay uncertain, and null results are published as methodological findings. A result is only as honest as its failure log.
Hypothesize first, then test
Before I touch the bench or the data, I write a hypothesis and what would falsify it, and I test it before building on it. The aging study began as a question: does nuclear-mitochondrial imbalance suppress regenerative signatures? The answer came back tissue-specific.
Learn what the question demands
I love exploring and learning new things, so when a hypothesis needs a tool I do not have, I learn it. Collagen extraction, hydrogel formulation, DESeq2, FoldX, BETSE, AutoDock Vina: each arrived because a question needed it.
Skills, as genes
Tap a skill to express it.
Science and code
Wet lab
Make and lead
People and teams
Science is a team sport. Beyond the lab I have led, organized and volunteered.
I organize events
Creative Head of IEC (the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Club), after serving as People and Culture Head. We collaborated with Takhleeq Problem Solving Institute at UCP. I ran social media and promotion for OOTA, Pakistan's largest game jam, and for a month-long pop-up that backed 25+ student startups.
I help people tell their science
As social media manager for UCP's Department of Biotechnology for three years, I helped students share their research in their own voices. I just like spreading the word of science. At TAAKRA, a festival of 30+ universities, I won Best Subcore Team Member.
I build tiny businesses
Operations, outreach and marketing for two student-run food startups, Fasleh and Chuski. I handled budgeting for one and packaging design for the other.
I volunteer
At an Allah Walay Trust food drive that served about 500 people a day for 10 days. At the Pakistan Young Heroes awards seminar with Alkhidmat Foundation. And at Rizq Society with Ibtada, running educational activities for underprivileged children.
I guide students in the lab
As Lab Manager Intern I ran practical sessions for 34 students: DNA extraction, gel electrophoresis, primer design, PCR and protein analysis.
I help organize ideas
I helped organize the 1st International Seminar on Advances in Biotechnology, on wheat biotechnology and molecular breeding, with Department of Biotechnology faculty.
My path, as a gene
The exons are the parts that got expressed. The loops are the introns, everything that got spliced out along the way.
Make regeneration real in mammals.
Then build the company that delivers it. And yes, I am aiming for a Nobel Prize.
I say that last part out loud because the target sets the standard for every experiment I run. Here is the plan, and why it is a safer bet than it sounds.
Find the core
Regeneration looks like magic until you find the minimal program. I am triangulating it from four sides: genes shared between scarring and regrowing tissue, the bioelectric signals between cells, the aging brakes that may switch regeneration off, and disease-cell states a twin can score.
Prove it
In a lab that wants to ask the same question, I move from computational hypotheses to causal experiments: perturb the core, watch tissue choose between scar and regrowth, and publish the nulls beside the wins.
Build it
Characterized mechanisms become a regenerative medicine company: therapies designed on mechanisms we can name and measure, not on hope. I will start with scars, where I already have a defended prototype system (in vitro).
Why this is a safe bet
I finish things
I defended a two-part wound-healing system alone while most of my cohort worked in groups of five or six.
I audit myself
Every project above ships with its failure log. You never have to dig for the weak spots. I hand them to you.
I cross fields
Wet lab, genomics, simulation, protein structure and a digital twin, all in one undergraduate degree, each picked up because a hypothesis needed it.
I build teams
I led IEC as People and Culture Head, then Creative Head, helped back 25+ student startups, and volunteered at a drive that fed about 500 people a day.
What I am looking for, and what you get
I am looking for
A PhD lab in stem cell biology or regenerative medicine that wants to find what enables or blocks regeneration. Collaborators who like falsifiable questions. Mentors, future co-founders and funders who would rather back mechanisms than hype.
You get
A researcher who turns a moonshot into falsifiable steps, reports honestly when they fail, and ships. Every experiment carries a written "what if I am wrong", so even a failure gives you an answer.
If a hypothesis fails, you will know exactly why, with the receipts. Join the bet.