Ms. Samia Ltaief obtained her Master's degree in Research in Life Sciences, specializing in Microbiology and Molecular Epidemiology from Sciences University of Tunis in January 2013. Her project was focused on the adaptation of BHK-21 cells in suspension culture and the study of their capacity for replication of the rabies virus. She carried out her project in the Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology, Biotechnology and Vaccine Development at the Pasteur Institute, Tunisia; she was supervised by Dr. Hella Kallel. Following the completion of her Master's degree, Ms. Ltaief worked as a Senior Lab Technician at a private medical laboratory in Tunisia for one year. She then moved to the XEN Lab of Dermocosmetic products in Tunisia in May 2014 and worked as a Quality Manager for one year. In February 2018, she joined National Center for Cancer Care and Research (NCCCR) in HMC in Qatar as a trainee, learning various immunological techniques.

Currenlty Ms. Ltaief works in QBRI as a senior research associate. Her research interest is focused on studying the role of the immune system among those with autism spectrum disorder and its correlation with neuronal phenotypes under the supervision of Dr. Abeer Al-Shammari.

Dr. Wesal holds a Bachelor’s in Medical Laboratory Sciences, a Master’s in Diagnostic Molecular Biology and Human Genetics, a Doctorate in Business Administration, and has a rich background in medical research and administration. Formerly a teaching assistant at Jordan University of Science and Technology (JUST), she contributed as a research and laboratory supervisor, specializing in DNA extraction, mutation screening, and forensic gene scanning. Subsequently, she was a senior research associate at the Shafallah Medical Genetics Center, Doha, leading projects in the areas of genetics, Autism, and Exome Sequencing research.

In 2014, Dr. Wesal joined Qatar Biomedical Research Institute (QBRI), focusing on identifying mutations for Intellectual Disability. Currently, her work delves into molecular biology and biomarker identification in Autism. It centers on studying the properties of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and CRISPR-CAS9 of people on the Autism spectrum, exploring characteristics of cells differentiated into cortical neurons. Dr. Wesal's extensive expertise contributes significantly to cutting-edge research in neurological disorders.

Maha, AL-Thani is a Research Fellow at Qatar Biomedical Research Center. Her primary research focus is human iPSC disease modeling and neurovascular unit co-culture. She received her PhD in Clinical Neurosciences from the University of Cambridge, and her dissertation “hiPSC-Derived Cerebral Small Vessel Disease Models”, published in 2023, was centered around blood-brain barrier modeling that led to novel hiPSC-derived models of the cerebral Small Vessel Disease variants COL4A1/2 and HTRA1. These models were later used in a drug-screening collaboration with AstraZeneca. The project was funded by the British Heart Foundation, Alzheimer’s Association, Stroke Association and Medical Research Foundation. 

Safa Salim graduated with a major in Biological Sciences and minor in Psychology from Carnegie Mellon University Qatar in 2017. She joined the Biological and Biomedical Sciences program in Hamad Bin Khalifa University to obtain her Masters and PhD.

During her undergraduate studies, Safa was involved in several research projects, which include: examining gene expression in development and regeneration of the sea star Patiria Miniata at Mellon Institute, Pittsburgh, USA; analyzing the role of DNAJB3/HSP-40 co-chaperone in regulating glucose homeostasis and insulin signaling at QBRI; comparing the protein profiles of Arthrobacter Phage (Sand Phage) and Mycobacterium Smegmatis Phage (Soil Phage) at Carnegie Mellon University Qatar; and expressing, purifying, and characterizing the transcription factors Sox7 and Sox17 HMG domain and its mutant at QBRI.

Muneera Fayyad has earned her Bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences from the American University of Sharjah in 2015 and her Master's degree in Biomedical and Biological Sciences from Hamad Bin Khalifa University in 2017. She is currently pursuing her PhD under the supervision of Prof. El-Agnaf and is working on developing and characterizing antibodies as research tools to study Parkinson’s disease and related disorders.

Mrs. Neyla Al Akl received her Bachelor’s degree in Medical Laboratory Technology from the Balamand University, Lebanon and pursued her Master’s in Immunology and Microbiology from the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. She worked as an assistant embryologist at EVE Fertility Center in Beirut and after obtaining her MS degree she joined the department of Experimental pathology, Immunology and Microbiology at the American University of Beirut as a Research Assistant. During her 7 years of laboratory research work she was involved in several projects related to the effect of bovine cartilage, antibiotics and Coley’s mixed bacterial toxin on tumor growth, in addition to defining the mechanism of action of certain vaccine adjuvants.

Mrs Neyla joined QBRI in 2018 and is part of Dr. Arredouani's team. She provides technical and administrative support to all members of the team and is also involved in a research project that focuses on the association between the salivary alpha- amylase and metabolic disorders in the Qatari population.

Ms. Aisha AlMulla is currently pursuing her Master's in Biological and Biomedical Sciences at Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), and is working under the supervision of Dr. Essam Abdelalim of QBRI. She obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences (Cancer Biology) from the University of Westminster, London in 2017. She worked on exploring the role of Epithelial-to-Mesenchymal Transition markers in HER2+ breast cancer cells, mainly focusing on the expression levels of the mesenchymal marker SNAIL involved in metastasis of primary cancer cells to secondary organs.

She gained brief experience from working on differentiation and maintenance of iPSCs in Dr. Essam Abdelalim’s laboratory in 2014. Keeping in view the promising applications of stem cells in disease treatment, she is currently working on the generation and differentiation of pluripotent stem cells to hepatocytes in the same lab, as a part of a bigger project that explores the pathogenesis and underlying molecular mechanisms of insulin resistance and diabetes.

Ms. Eman W. Abdelsalam is a PhD student at Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) in the Genomics and Precision Medicine (GPM) program, since August, 2017. Her thesis focuses on studying inherited insulin resistance in the offspring of parents with type 2 diabetes, using human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) - under the supervision of Dr. Essam Abdelalim. She obtained her Master 's and Bachelor's degrees in Microbiology from Benha University in Egypt. In 2014, Eman joined Qatar University as a Research Assistant at the College of Arts and Science (CAS), where she was involved in projects studying the microbial community analyses and impact network analysis toward integrated disease management and other ecological concerns.

Ms. Eman W. Abdelsalam was also involved in a project focused on the isolation of natural products from medicinal plants used in Qatari traditional medicine and the determination of their antimicrobial, antioxidant and anticancer properties. In 2017, she joined Biomedical Research Center (BRC) at Qatar University as a research assistant, where she participated in different research projects in collaboration with Hamad medical corporation (HMC), Ministry of Environment, College of health Science and others. Her interest was to investigate the Epidemiologic and Genotypic characteristics of ESBL and carbapenems among clinical isolates from children presented with urinary tract infection (UTI) in primary health care in Qatar. Mrs. Abdelsalam received the Best Faculty & Postdoc Poster Award in medical, biomedical and health science in 2018.

Dr. Mifsud graduated in biology from Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest in 2006 and obtained her PhD from the Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna in 2010. Her work with Thomas Jenuwein involved the epigenetic characterisation of a histone methylation deficient mouse model. After her molecular biology training, she started bioinformatics in the laboratory of Professor Nicholas Luscombe at EMBL European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) in Cambridge, and subsequently moved to UCL and the Crick Institute in London. In her postdoctoral work she focussed on developing methods for the analysis of Hi-C type data and finding new biological insights into transcriptional regulation, by applying these methods to Hi-C and capture Hi-C data sets. Dr. Mifsud joined the William Harvey Research Insitute in QMUL as an MRC eMedLab Career Development Fellow and Lecturer in 2015, where she used chromatin interaction data to understand the function of regulatory GWAS mutations. Dr. Mifsud has been an Assistant Professor at HBKU since July 2018.

Dr. Issam Hmila obtained his PhD in Biology between the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium, and the University of Tunis El Manar, Tunisia in 2010. He obtained an interuniversity diploma in advanced bioinformatics knowledge from the University-Paris Cité, France. He has also completed various courses in biostatistics, immunology, drug design, and discovery from international institutes.

His projects focus on the construction of combinatory libraries, phage display screening, and the engineering of nanobodies for immunotherapy. He was hired as an assistant professor at the Pasteur Institute in 2012, where he developed aptamers and new tools for detecting respiratory viruses of clinical importance in collaboration with the University of Minnesota, USA, and Uppsala University, Sweden. 

In 2017, he joined the Neurological Disorders Research Center at Qatar Biomedical Research Institute, where he conducted his research to develop new tools for therapy against Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases based on nanobodies and aptamers. His work focuses on the generation of cortical neurons from induced pluripotent stem cells and the evaluation by global transcriptomic, proteomic, and integrated omics, environmental pollutants, and new drugs with potential Alzheimer's disease modulation.