People Biography

Dr. Abdesselem is a Core Manager at the Office of Vice President for Research and a Lecturer at the College of Health and Life Sciences. He obtained his PhD in Neurobiology from the University of Konstanz, Germany in 2009. His doctoral training in Prof. Stürmer’s lab focused on the function of the NOGO-66 myelin-associated proteins in nervous system regeneration. He then moved to the United States to conduct postdoctoral training at Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM)-New York and the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, where he investigated the role of neuronal guidance molecules in developing the nervous system.

In 2012, he moved to Qatar to join WCM-Q as a Research Fellow to study the function of SIRT2 in obesity. In 2016, Dr. Abdesselem was offered the position of Laboratory Manager at QBRI to manage the Neurological Disorders Research Center where he worked in El Agnaf’s research group on alpha-synuclein proteins in Parkinson’s disease.

He made very significant contributions to the success of his research group in developing novel tools to understand the molecular pathogenesis of PD. In 2019, he successfully built the new Proteomics Core Facility and transferred new biomarker technologies to HBKU, such as Olink, Sengenics, CDI, and Quanterix. He has successfully led and managed the core facility, which became certified and fully operational in 2020. In addition to his management roles, he has published many peer-reviewed papers in high-impact factor journals.