Ongoing projects

Does competing in a science competition change a low-income student’s engagement, performance and career aspirations, or does it only reward students who were already going to succeed?

Full title

Evaluating the impact of the National Science Bowl Pakistan (NSB-P) programme on high school students’ STEM engagement, performance and career aspirations: a randomised controlled trial

Design

Randomised controlled trial, randomised at school level

Status

Implementation and data collection, phased rollout through 2026

Setting

185 schools of The Citizens Foundation, Pakistan; with the Centre for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP)

Team

Salar H, Salar M, Asim M, Kumari V, Khwaja A, Khwaja AI (principal investigator, Harvard Kennedy School), Syed M

My role

First author and research team member. Co-wrote the funded proposal and co-authored the product requirements for the trial’s competition app with CERP Labs.

Funding

The Agency Fund, Global Math Talent Grant (US$183,796, April 2023)

More on this project

Can a less invasive form of oscillatory support keep preterm infants with respiratory distress syndrome off the ventilator as well as standard nasal ventilation?

Full title

Non-invasive high-frequency oscillatory ventilation versus nasal intermittent mandatory ventilation as primary respiratory support in preterm neonates with respiratory distress syndrome: a non-inferiority randomised controlled trial

Design

Non-inferiority randomised controlled trial in preterm neonates

Status

In progress

Setting

Neonatal intensive care unit, Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi

Team

Naz H, Rizvi A, Ul Ain N, Hussain M, Salar H, Salar M. Principal investigator: Dr Ali Shabbir Hussain

My role

Co-author

After extubation, which non-invasive mode better prevents re-intubation in infants born at 26 weeks or later?

Full title

Effectiveness of non-invasive high-frequency oscillatory ventilation versus nasal intermittent mandatory ventilation as post-extubation respiratory support in neonates born at ≥26 weeks’ gestation: a randomised clinical trial (NOV-A)

Design

Randomised clinical trial in neonates born at 26 weeks or later

Status

In progress

Setting

Neonatal intensive care unit, Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi

Team

Naz H, Kumar V, Rizvi A, Ul Ain N, Shaikh IR, Salar H, Salar M. Principal investigator: Dr Ali Shabbir Hussain

My role

Co-author

Does tranexamic acid applied directly to the surgical field reduce bleeding after open-heart surgery in children, compared with saline?

Full title

Effect of topical tranexamic acid vs. normal saline on post-operative bleeding in pediatric open-heart surgery: a double-blinded randomized controlled trial (TANS trial)

Design

Double-blind randomised controlled trial

Status

Ongoing

Team

Salar H, Salar M, Shahabuddin S

My role

First author

Can chest CTs that patients with COPD already have be read automatically for bone density and muscle loss, to find people at risk of fracture who never get a DXA scan?

Full title

Automated assessment of vertebral bone mineral density, spinal sarcopenia and fracture risk from chest CT in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Design

Multi-cohort imaging study using deep learning segmentation (NIH grant proposal in development)

Status

Grant proposal in development, 2026

Setting

MESA, COPDGene, CARDIA and RURAL cohorts

Team

Demehri Lab, Russell H. Morgan Department of Radiology and Radiological Science, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (Dr Shadpour Demehri)

My role

Contributed to the research strategy and methods of the NIH proposal, and to the segmentation and machine learning work: 3D thoracic vertebral segmentation (T1 to T10) with modified TotalSegmentator and nnU-Net, HU calibration, volumetric BMD and paraspinal muscle features.

Can a structured checklist give reliable scores when most of a conference’s abstract reviewers are students, and how many reviewers does each abstract need?

Full title

Development and evaluation of a structured conference abstract scoring tool for capacity development in peer review

Design

Instrument development and psychometric evaluation (content validity, inter-rater and test–retest reliability)

Status

Manuscript under revision

Setting

International Student Research Conference 2024, Aga Khan University, Karachi

Team

Student Research Forum, the Aga Khan University

My role

Developed the abstract scoring criteria and led the validation study

Which host immune pathways separate COVID-19 patients from healthy controls once viral and microbial reads are removed?

Full title

Nasopharyngeal transcriptomic profiling of unvaccinated COVID-19 patients reveals translational shutdown, mucosal immune suppression, and convergence on neurodegenerative pathway gene sets

Design

Secondary analysis of public RNA-seq data (GSE152075)

Status

Manuscript in preparation

Team

Salar H, Salar M, Hasan Z. Hasan Lab, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Aga Khan University

My role

First author. Designed the pipeline: Kraken2 and DIAMOND read filtering, STAR alignment to GRCh38, featureCounts, DESeq2 differential expression, GO and KEGG enrichment.