Ilham Yahya Abdi studied at the University of Westminster in London, U.K, where she completed her B.S.c in Biomedical Sciences in 2014, and her M.Sc. in Medical Molecular Sciences in 2015. For her M.Sc. research project, she studied the ‘Regulatory effects of estrogen on microglia function and behavior’. After her studies, Ilham completed a 3-month rotational training program at Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) Pathology laboratories in Doha, in January 2018. She then continued her training at HMC were she was involved in a voluntary research internship at the Interim Translational Research Institute (iTRI) that she completed in April 2018. There she worked on various projects involving epidermal inflammation and the effects of various therapeutic agents on cutaneous inflammation under the supervision of Dr. Joerg Buddenkote. 

Ilham joined QBRI in July 2018 as a Research Assistant in Dr. Omar El Agnaf’s team. Her research interests lie in the field of neurological disorders, in particular, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, and developing diagnostic tools for them. Her current research project is developing immunoassays and discovering novel biomarkers for Parkinson’s disease and related disorders.