DISEASE MODELING AND THERAPEUTICS

Dr. Essam Abdelalim

Conference Chair

Dr. Abdelalim is a Principal Investigator at Sidra Medicine, where he leads the Laboratory of Pluripotent Stem Cell Disease Modeling. He earned his PhD in Medical Science from Shiga University of Medical Science in Japan. Subsequently, he undertook a postdoctoral fellowship and assumed the role of Assistant Professor at the same University. Before joining Sidra, he held the position of Senior Scientist at QBRI until February 2024. Notably, he established Qatar’s first pluripotent stem cell program focused to diabetes research. His team successfully generated multiple iPSC lines from healthy and diseased individuals and developed advanced protocols to enhance the differentiation of stem cells into pancreatic islets, insulin-target cells, and other cell types. He played a key role as Chair of the HSCI-QBRI Steering Committee Agreement, coordinating collaborative efforts between the HSCI and QBRI in stem cell and diabetes research. Also, Dr. Abdelalim serves on the editorial boards of “Stem Cells Translational Medicine” and “Stem Cells and Development”. He has authored over 75 peer-reviewed articles and has received numerous research grants and honors for his contributions to the field. Dr. Abdelalim also holds a joint appointment as Associate Professor at HBKU, where he teaches “Stem Cell Biology” and mentors graduate students.

Dr. Luis Saraiva

Conference Chair

In 2004, Luis concluded an integrated B.Sc. and M.Sc. degree in Biology at the University of Evora and the Gulbenkian Institute of Science in Portugal. Luis advanced to a Ph.D. in Genetics at the International Graduate School in Genetics and Functional Genomics of the University of Cologne (Germany), graduating summa cum laude in 2008. Next, his academic journey took him to Harvard Medical School as a visiting scientist, funded by the Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds, followed by his first postdoctoral appointment at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (USA). In 2013, he received the EBI–Sanger Postdoctoral (ESPOD) Fellowship, which led him to continue his postdoctoral training at the EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute and the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge (UK), where he also earned a Sanger Early Career Innovation Award.

In 2015, he joined Sidra Medicine (Qatar), where he is currently based, leading the Human Disease Modeling and Therapeutics Laboratory and the Congenital Malformations Clinical Research Program. He served as Adjunct Faculty at the Monell Chemical Senses Center (USA) from 2016-2023, has been a Joint Professor at Hamad bin Khalifa University (Qatar) since 2018, and an Associate Professor Adjunct at Yale University (USA) since 2024.