Dr. Saleh obtained her bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences from Qatar University in 2014. She later joined the Ardehali Laboratory as a visiting scientist at David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA). She participated in the characterization of cardiovascular progenitor cells derived from human pluripotent stem cells. Dr. Saleh then joined Dr. Apil Pyle Laboratory as a Graduate Student Researcher; she investigated how Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy disease severity, in mouse models, impacts the systemic delivery of human skeletal muscle progenitor cells. She obtained her PhD in Molecular, Cellular and Integrative Physiology from UCLA in 2022. 

Dr. Ali Ait Hssain is a senior consultant intensivist and member of the ECMO Team at Hamad General Hospital, in Doha, Qatar. He has supervised PhD students at HBKU and is involved in clinical research including ICU patients with various diseases. He has also contributed to the Covid 19 diagnosis research with other colleagues at HBKU.

Alongside this, Dr. Hssain is an assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College. He received his medical degree and completed his residency of anesthesiology and critical care medicine in France.

Dr. Ali Ait Hssain has more than 20 years’ experience in Critical Care Medicine from different countries. He served as assistant clinical professor in university d’Auvergne in Clermont Ferrand, France. He was at the origin of the launch of the ECMO program in his center in 2007. 

He is involved in several multicenter trials as investigator in international and multicenter collaborative projects with academic institutions. He is the author of more than 80 papers and book chapters. He is the actual lead for research at the medical intensive care unit. He is the lead for the ECMO Simulation Team of Doha (ECSiTeD) and therefore advocating for Simulation Based training for interprofessional development.

Khaled Machaca is Professor of Physiology and Biophysics. He has been training and supervision of Hamad Bin Khalifa University graduate students for the past 5 years. Alongside that, he is a professor at Weill Cornell Medicine and serves as the Senior Associate Dean for Research, Innovation and Commercialization for the Qatar campus. In that capacity he oversees the academic, financial, operational and compliance aspects of the research department, which currently encompasses about 200 researchers. Dr Machaca oversaw the establishment of the administrative and regulatory infrastructure, centralized core laboratories, and faculty recruitment. 

The Machaca Lab is interested in intracellular signaling under physiological and pathological conditions with a focus on calcium signaling. Our goal is to better define these signaling pathways at the cellular and molecular levels to identify potential therapeutic targets in various disease states. We are particularly interested in the role of calcium in cancer, cardiovascular and immune disfunction, as well as in oocyte maturation in preparation for fertilization. Work from the Machaca Lab has been published in leading biomedical journals and garnered continuous extramural funding from NIH and the Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF).  Khaled serves of several editorial boards, reviews widely for scientific journals and granting agencies, and has an extensive track record of training students and postdoctoral fellows.

Dr. Nayef A. Mazloum is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Hamad Bin Khalifa University. He graduated from the American University of Beirut in 1994 and completed his PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology at New York Medical College in Valhalla in 2003.

Dr. Nayef A. Mazloum worked as an instructor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York. He did his postdoctoral training at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and worked at Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar (WCM-Q).

Dr. Mazloum’s research focuses on the molecular aspects of DNA repair mechanisms, the stability of the genome, and how the dysfunction of these regulatory pathways could lead to cancer, age-related or metabolic diseases.

His lab employs cellular, molecular, and genetic tools to investigate altered molecular pathways in metabolic disorders and cancer. Dr. Mazloum actively collaborates with local stakeholders in Qatar, including Hamad Medical Corporation, Qatar University, Texas A&M University, Qatar Biomedical Research Institute, and Hamad Bin Khalifa University. He also collaborates with global investigators at Harvard Medical School, Mayo Clinic, Brown University, and the University of East Anglia.

Umm-Kulthum is an early career researcher with experience in genomics, metagenomics, biomedical research and metabolomics. She spent most of her life in Qatar where she also graduated with research honours from Carnegie Mellon University located at the prestigious Education City. Her postgraduate experience involved several biomedical research projects including metabolomics of Alzheimer’s disease and liver diseases at Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine in the UK. Her PhD research with Hamad Bin Khalifa University was a combination of clinical and genomics research, looking into the genetics underlying rare growth disorders in paediatric patients recruited from a hospital in Qatar. Currently, Umm-Kulthum is working as a post-doctoral researcher with Professor Omar Albagha where she is involved in numerous Genome-Wide Association Studies projects which utilize the Qatar Genome Programme data to investigate various traits.

Dr. Zubair Shah is an Assistant Professor in the College of Science and Engineering specializing in artificial intelligence and big data analytics with a focus on health informatics. He holds an MS degree in Computer System Engineering from Politecnico di Milano, Italy, and a PhD from the University of New South Wales, Australia. Before joining HBKU, Dr. Shah was a Research Fellow at the Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Macquarie University, from 2017 to 2019.

Dr. Shah's research focuses on applying AI to healthcare, particularly in developing AI-driven applications that enhance disease diagnosis and prediction. He has secured critical funding from HBKU Innovation Center and QNRF to advance these efforts, including work on diabetes management and multimodal AI systems combining electronic health records (EHR), medical imaging, and multi-omics data. His team has developed innovative deep-learning techniques, including methods for identifying IDH mutations from histopathology slides and exploring the use of generative models like GANs and neural diffusion for medical data augmentation.

Dr. Shah has published extensively in leading international journals and conferences, and his research also explores the potential of foundation AI models in healthcare, contributing significantly to advancements in AI-powered medical diagnostics.

Dr. Afif Ben Mahmoud is an accomplished geneticist and genome data analyst with extensive expertise in human molecular genetics. He earned an engineering degree in agriculture and animal production, a master's in genetics and biodiversity, and a PhD in molecular and human genetics. With over 12 years of experience in research and academia, Dr. Ben-Mahmoud has dedicated his work to elucidating cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying human genetic diseases, focusing on identifying disease genes and mutations responsible for rare recessive disorders, particularly in Arab populations.

His professional contributions in genetic pathology span from phenotypic and genotypic characterization of patients with monogenic diseases to functional studies aimed at demonstrating the pathogenicity of disease-causing novel genes and gene variations. He has also led numerous projects to decode rare human monogenic diseases, significantly advancing the field. 

Dr. Afif Ben Mahmoud’s notable accomplishments include the first functional analysis of B3GALTL in Tunisian patients with Peters Plus Syndrome, the identification of MAST1 as a novel intellectual disability gene, and confirming the role of B3GALT6 in Al-Gazali Syndrome. Additionally, he has identified 16 autosomal dominant candidate genes in syndromic neurodevelopmental disorders and new candidate loci for intellectual disability and Kallmann syndrome. Dr. Ben-Mahmoud has published 25 high-quality articles in renowned international peer-reviewed journals, with over 500 citations and an h-index of 14.

Dr. Nehad Alajez earned his PhD in tumour immunology from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in USA, and subsequently completed his post-doctoral training at the Princess Margaret Cancer Center (University Health Network), a premier cancer research institute in Canada. His main research interest is to investigate the role of the Polycomb gene family and non-coding microRNAs in driving cancer progression and their potential utilization for targeted therapies. Dr. Alajez is a recipient of several prestigious awards and has published more than 100 articles in top-tier ISI-indexed journals including Blood, Cancer Research, Cell Death and Differentiation, Cell Death and Disease, Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy, Molecular Therapy (family journals), EMBO Molecular Medicine, and in Science Translational Medicine. Dr. Alajez currently has close to 5000 citations and an h-index of 35 and i10-index of 74.

Prior to his current appointment, Dr. Alajez was appointed as the Associate Professor at King Saud University College of Medicine, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Dr. Alajez’s main research interests are focused on ‘translational oncology research’ with main emphasis on novel biomarker discovery and targeted therapeutics for breast cancers. In particular, Dr. Alajez’s team is studying noncoding RNAs (micoRNAs and lncRNAs) as disease and predictive biomarkers for patients’ response to therapy. Dr. Alajez has strong expertise in transcriptome analysis, noncoding RNAs, and biomarker discovery field and is currently ranked among the top 2% most cited scientist globally. He is a recipient of several major grants, including funding from Qatar National Research Fund, in addition to his editorial roles on several journals.

Dr. Esmat Zaidan is an Associate Professor at the College of Public Policy at Hamad Bin Khalifa University. She has 22 years of experience in academic institutions and international organizations like the World Bank, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD), and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). She has spent 13 years in academia, holding senior roles in administration, teaching, and research.

Her experience includes strategic planning, academic accreditation, and ranking, curriculum design and restructuring, the conceptualization of new academic initiatives, scientific research and evaluation, partnerships with stakeholders, as well as team leadership and capacity building. She is a strong advocate for excellence in teaching and research, teamwork and collaborative approaches, and the faculty's role in societal progress. 

Her research primarily focuses on sustainable development policy and planning with an emphasis on sustainable urbanism and the complex interaction between humans and built environments. Her research portfolio extensively covers urban resilience and sustainability policies. 

Dr. Esmat Zaidan’s approach is interdisciplinary, addressing dynamic models of socioeconomic and environmental systems to create simulations and predictive models to enhance understanding and forecasting of the complex interplays between urban and natural environments. This includes the policy pathway for energy-efficient buildings, sustainable, resilient, smart, and people-centric urban areas, as well as impacts of technological change in urban life including smart cities and net-zero carbon communities.

Jasir Jawad is a Research Engineer at Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute (QEERI) at Haman Bin Khalifa University, Qatar. His research at QEERI is focused on the operation and supporting maintenance at the advanced MED pilot plant. He is also involved in the operation, maintenance, mathematical modeling and analysis of the Linear Fresnel Collector and Organic Rankine Cycle (LFC-ORC) pilot power plant at the QEERI outside testing facility. Moreover, he is studying advanced water vapor compression using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) tools.
 
He received his MS degree in Chemical Engineering from Texas A&M University at Qatar. He earned his bachelor's in Chemical Engineering from NED University of Engineering and Technology, Pakistan.