Zoha Zahid Fazal

Bio

Zoha Zahid Fazal is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Sepah Lab, which advances screening innovation and diagnostic automation for retinal degenerative diseases through cutting-edge research and artificial intelligence tools. During her time at Stanford, she has collaborated across the Spencer Center for Vision Research, the Center for Digital Health, the Center for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine and Imaging, the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute, the Ocular Imaging Research & Reading Center, and the Mussallem Center for Biodesign—developing an expansive skill set that bridges medicine, computation, and coding.

Previously, as a predoctoral scholar, Zoha worked closely with the Director of the Global Health Dermatology Program at the Yale School of Medicine to bridge gaps in understanding tropical and cultural dermatology through global training, research, advocacy, and interventions. She also gained clinical experience through the Northwestern Medicine Adjunct Dermatology Program, contributing to patient care, clinical training, and research in skin-of-color, autoimmune, and complex dermatopathies. Her efforts helped establish collaborative research initiatives linking these institutions with her home medical school in Pakistan.

Zoha earned her medical degree from the Aga Khan University with honors in Community Health Sciences and is recognized for her leadership and impact in community service and global health research. She served as a global research lead from Pakistan for the COVAD Collaborative, led by the NHS Foundation Trust UK, where her work focused on patient safety, healthcare quality, and vaccine uptake among individuals with autoimmune diseases. For her contributions to poverty alleviation and pandemic relief, she was honored with the Quadragon Member of the Year Award in 2020. Zoha also volunteered extensively at flood-relief and rural medical camps in Pakistan, where she witnessed firsthand the challenges of resource constraints and paper-based health records.

Zoha’s passion for global health research and big-data analytics began early. She graduated with distinction from Cedar College, where she majored in biological sciences and advanced mathematics, and spent her summers shadowing a nursing school faculty member and public health expert at the institution that later became her medical school. She has since continued to explore coding healthcare data and research analytic softwares through foundational courses in her free time. As a medical student, she also contributed to interventional studies sponsored by the Gates Foundation which aimed to improve maternal, neonatal, and child health outcomes in resource-constrained settings.

Looking ahead, Zoha envisions a career as a clinician-scientist specializing in biomedical informatics. She aims to design sustainable, feasible, scalable, and adaptive digital health systems for developing nations which reflect local resource, cultural, and environmental contexts. By advancing digital health innovation grounded in empathy, she hopes to promote equitable, evidence-based care worldwide.