Rim Abdul Kader Bacha is currently studying for a Master's degree in Biomedical and Biological Sciences at the College of Science and Engineering, Hamad Bin Khalifa University. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Biomedical Sciences from the College of Health Science, Qatar University. Rim received an honors for her undergraduate research project entitled “Vitamin D deficiency and oxidative stress”. Moreover, during her undergraduate studies, Rim enrolled in the undergraduate research program working on a project entitled “The Association of the Serotonin Transporter Gene Polymorphism (5-HTTLPR) and Major Depression in Qatar“. Through an internship at Hamad Medical Corporation, Rim has acquired clinical laboratory skills in haematology, immunology and clinical chemistry.

Rim recently joined Dr.Julie Decock’s team as an MSc student, where she will conduct her research work into the mechanistic basis of immune evasion in triple negative breast cancer with a particular focus on the cancer testis antigen PRAME.

Ghaneya Al Khadairi is currently pursuing her PhD in Biomedical and Biological Sciences at the College of Science and Engineering, Hamad Bin Khalifa University. She holds a BSc in Biomedical Sciences (Qatar University) and completed her MSc in Biomedical and Biological Sciences at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in 2017. Ghaneya was awarded a competitive graduate scholarship from the Qatar Research Leadership Program (QRLP) of Qatar Foundation, to pursue her doctoral research work as part of Dr Julie Decock’ s team.

Her PhD work focuses on the cancer testis antigen PRAME, also known as PReferentially expressed Antigen in MElanoma, and its role in the inherent aggressive behavior of triple negative breast cancer by facilitating the acquisition of several hallmarks of cancer. Findings from this project will enable us to assess whether PRAME has potential to be used as a candidate therapeutic target for triple negative breast cancer.

Ms. Asma Elashi received her Bachelor’s degree in biological sciences from Qatar University in 2017. Her research work as an undergraduate student was in cancer and her research project entitled, Investigating the effect of PRMT5 on Breast cell proliferation through β-CATENIN target gene expression. Her graduation project focused on molecular and in vitro studies in breast cancer.

Ms. Elashi is currently pursuing her Master’s in biomedical and biological science, at HBKU. She is interested to continue her research in cancer and immunotherapy. Her work now is focused on breast and colorectal cancer, as these cancers result in high mortality worldwide. Ms. Elashi’s research involves gene expression and epigenetic medications of many immune checkpoints and their associations with the aforementioned type of cancers.

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.

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. Saif Al-Kuwari is an associate professor at the College of Science and Engineering and director of the Qatar Center for Quantum Computing (QC2) at Hamad Bin Khalifa University. Dr. Saif Al-Kuwari graduated in computers and networks from the University of Essex and has two PhDs in Cryptography and Computational Forensics from the University of Bath and Royal Holloway, University of London

He is a fellow of IET and BCS and a senior member of IEEE and ACM. His research focuses on quantum cryptography, quantum machine learning, and quantum sensing.

Dr. Ameni Boumaiza is currently working as a Scientist at Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute (QEERI), Hamad Bin Khalifa University. She is serving as a Project Lead of the PV Adoption and Trade project under the Energy Management Program and has worked on several projects funded by the Qatar National Research Fund. Her primary research focus is on Solar Energy management and smart systems based on AI. She has completed several studies on solar PV adoption, techno-economic modeling of energy systems and energy trading applications based on the Blockchain technology.

Prior to joining HBKU/QEERI, Dr. Ameni Boumaiza received a full PhD merit-based scholarship from the Ministry of Higher Education and Research in France. She got her PhD in 2013 in Computer Engineering from the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation INRIA and the University of Lorrain, France and from the Computer Vision Center CVC in UAB Barcelona, Spain. She has held various positions in academia and industry in France. She was a part of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission Institute CEA-List and the Vision and Content Engineering Lab LVIC in Saclay, Paris, France. Having benefited from closed interactions with laboratories, companies such as CEA-LVIC, INRIA, Thales, she got a strong background in artificial intelligence, renewable energy systems, computer vision, machine learning and robotics.

Her scientific research focuses on strategies addressing energy systems, artificial intelligence, robotics, image processing data science with an emphasis on data mining and machine learning and evaluative techniques to create solutions to complex challenges. She is specialized in software development modeling, simulation, testing, and quality assurance. She managed complex technical BI projects and collaborated directly with global engineering and research teams to create business intelligence solutions, and identify and assess new technologies prior to the software implementation.