Vikram Paralkar completed medical school in India before moving to the United States to pursue a career as a physician-scientist. Following an Internal Medicine residency and chief residency at Temple University, he undertook a Hematology-Oncology fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania, specializing in myeloid malignancies. His post-doctoral research, conducted under the mentorship of Mitchell Weiss at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia focused on noncoding RNA regulation in hematopoiesis.

In 2017, Dr. Paralkar established his independent laboratory as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Division of Hematology-Oncology at Penn, focusing on transcriptional regulation and noncoding RNAs in hematopoiesis and leukemia. A unique research niche of his group is the regulation of ribosomal RNA (rRNA), the most abundant RNA in the cell. His laboratory has developed new bioinformatic and technical tools for rDNA study, assembled the first transcription factor (TF)-rDNA ChIP-Seq atlas, mapped rRNA regulation in hematopoiesis and leukemia, identified conserved rDNA binding of multiple hematopoietic and leukemic TFs, and pioneered methods to dissect rDNA epigenetics and transcriptional regulation. His laboratory has been funded by an NIGMS R35, an NHLBI R01 and R21, and several foundation awards, including an ASH Faculty Scholar Award.

Dr. Paralkar is active in ASH leadership, and is currently serving as Chair (2026) of the ASH Scientific Committee on Epigenetics and Genomics.