Alsafar's primary research interest concerns studying the genome of native Bedouin in the United Arab Emirates to identify specific genes that predispose to disease.[1] As part of her PhD thesis, she established the Emirates Family Registry in 2007 which eventually stored DNA samples from over 26,000 volunteers, 1700 of whom were ethnic Bedouins.[7][8] She conducted the first and largest Genome-wide association study of the Emirati Bedouin population which identified 5 genes unique to the Emirati population that was associated with type 2 diabetes mellitus, the strongest link being with the PRKD1 gene.