MENA Microbiome
From Biomarkers Discovery
to Microbiota-based Therapeutics

Dr. Martin Blaser

Plenary Speaker

Martin Blaser, a physician specializing in Infectious Diseases and Microbiology, holds the Henry Rutgers Chair of the Human Microbiome and directs the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine at Rutgers University. For >20 years, he has studied the relationship of the human microbiome with obesity, diabetes, asthma, inflammatory diseases, and cancer, focusing on early-life events and host-microbial developmental interactions. He served as President of IDSA, was elected to the National Academy of Medicine and American Academy of Arts and Sciences, received the Oswald Avery and Alexander Fleming Awards, and the Robert Koch Gold Medal, an honorary doctorate from the University of Bordeaux, and served as Chair, Presidential Advisory Council for Combatting Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria (PACCARB) under 3 presidential administrations. He wrote Missing Microbes, targeted to general audiences, translated into 20 languages, and with his wife Maria Gloria Dominguez Bello, featured in the film The Invisible Extinction focusing on changing human microecology and its consequences.

Dr. Rob Knight

Plenary Speaker

Rob Knight is the founding Director of the Center for Microbiome Innovation and Professor of Pediatrics, Bioengineering, Computer Science & Engineering and Halicioğlu Data Science Institute at UC San Diego. He is the Wolfe Family Endowed Chair in Microbiome Research at Rady Children's. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2024. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Academy of Microbiology. He was honored with the 2019 NIH Director’s Pioneer Award for his microbiome research and received the 2017 Massry Prize, often considered a predictor of the Nobel. He is the author of “Follow Your Gut: The Enormous Impact of Tiny Microbes” (Simon & Schuster, 2015), coauthor of “Dirt is Good: The Advantage of Germs for Your Child’s Developing Immune System (St. Martin’s Press, 2017), and written over 800 scientific articles. He spoke at TED in 2014 which is viewed over 2.3 million times. His lab has produced many of the software tools and laboratory techniques that enabled high-throughput microbiome science, including the QIIME pipeline (cited over 50,000 times as of this writing) and UniFrac (cited over 12,000 times including its web interface). He is co-founder of the Earth Microbiome Project, the American Gut Project, and the company Biota, Inc., which uses DNA from microbes in the subsurface to guide oilfield decisions. His work has linked microbes to a range of health conditions including obesity and inflammatory bowel disease, has enhanced our understanding of microbes in environments ranging from the oceans to the tundra, and made high-throughput sequencing techniques accessible to thousands of researchers around the world.

Dr. Knight can be followed on Twitter (@knightlabnews) or on his web site http://knightlab.ucsd.edu/.

Dr. Maria Dominguez-Bello

Keynote Speaker

Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello, PhD, is Distinguished Professor and Henry Rutgers Professor of Microbiome and Health at Rutgers University, affiliated with the Departments of Biochemistry and Microbiology and Anthropology. A Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), she serves on multiple journal editorial boards. Her research investigates the assembly of the infant microbiome and the effects of early-life perturbations, as well as pre-urban human microbiomes, the impact of modern practices on microbial diversity, and strategies for restoration. She is a founding member of the Microbiota Vault, a global initiative to safeguard microbial diversity essential for human and planetary health. Through this effort, she advances education and fosters international collaboration—particularly across the Global South—to establish and preserve microbiota collections in biodiversity hotspots.

Dr. Esther Jiménez Quintana

General Manager at Probisearch SLU, a company of Zendal Group.
MSc and PhD in Food Science and Technology with more than 16 years of experience in R&D projects in the field of probiotics for human and animal health. I was awarded in 2009 with the Extraordinary Prize of Doctoral PhD Thesis of the Veterinary Faculty of Complutense University of Madrid (Spain). PDD 2021 (Managerial Development Program) at IESE University of Navarra (Spain)
Co-author of 67 publications in SCI journals and 8 book chapters related to the microbiome and the application of probiotics. Co-inventor of 8 patents, 5 of them currently supporting commercial products in the market.
I have participated in more than 60 national and international conferences as speaker. I have directed 2 PhD Theses and 5 Master's Degree students. Member of the Spanish Microbiology Association and the Spanish Probiotics, Prebiotics and Microbiota Association.

Dr. Henrik Roager

Associate Prof. Henrik Roager leads the Nutrition, Microbiome and Metabolomics group at Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports at the University of Copenhagen. He earned his PhD in intestinal metabolomics from the Technical University of Denmark in 2016. In 2020, he was awarded a Starting Grant, enabling him to establish his research group at the University of Copenhagen. Today, he leads an international and multidisciplinary team of 15 people dedicated to elucidating the role of the human gut microbiota in digestion and health. Methodologies include controlled dietary intervention- and cohort studies in both adults and infants, multi-omics analyses including microbiome and metabolomics, and advanced data integration. Henrik Roager has published over 45 papers including corresponding and first authorships in high-ranking journals such as Nature Microbiology, Gut, and Nature Communications.

Dr. Irah King

Dr. Irah King is a Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Dr. King is the recipient of a Canada Research Chair in Barrier Immunity and currently serves as the Director of the McGill Centre for Microbiome Research and Microbiome Theme Leader for the McGill Interdisciplinary Initiative in Infection and Immunity. As a mucosal immunologist, Dr. King seeks to unravel mechanisms by which the gut microbiota shapes immune system development and host defense. Dr. King’s research has been continuously supported by national and international funding agencies and is consistently published in high-impact journals including Cell, Nature, Immunity, Nature Immunology and the Journal of Experimental Medicine. He currently serves as a Board Member of the Society for Mucosal Immunology and is Chair of the organizing committee for the 2026 International Congress of Mucosal Immunology to be held this summer in Montreal.

Dr. Jo-Ann Passmore

Professor Jo-Ann Passmore, PhD is Director of the Women’s Health Program at the Centre for Epidemic Response and Innovation (CERI), Stellenbosch University, South Africa, and an internationally recognised leader in mucosal immunology and vaginal microbiome research. Her work focuses on how genital tract microbiomes, inflammation, and epithelial barrier function shape women’s susceptibility to sexually transmitted infections and adverse reproductive outcomes. She founded VMRC4Africa (Vaginal Microbiome Research Consortium for Africa) in 2021, a multi-country initiative generating African-led microbiome reference datasets to enable the development of regionally relevant live biotherapeutic products, particularly for bacterial vaginosis. Prof Passmore also co-developed the Genital Inflammation Test (GIFT), a low-cost point-of-care diagnostic to support personalised sexual and reproductive health care for women. She is a Calestous Juma Scientific Leadership Fellow (Gates Foundation; 2021–2026), has published >140 peer-reviewed papers, holds two patents, and is committed to advancing equitable, locally-manufactured microbiome-based solutions for women’s health in Africa.

Dr. Nahla Mansour

Dr. Nahla M. Mansour is a Professor of Microbial Molecular Biology at the Chemistry of Natural and Microbial Products Department, Institute of Pharmaceutical and Drug Industries Research, National Research Centre, Egypt. She is the Founder of the Egyptian Foundation of Microbiome Sciences and its Applications (EFMSA, established in 2020). Dr. Mansour obtained her PhD in Microbial Genetic Engineering from the University of East Anglia, UK. Her research focuses on applied microbiome sciences, genetically modified probiotics, and microbiome-based therapeutics. She has led several national and international projects and actively promotes translating microbiome research into precision health innovations.

Dr. Ayman El-Shibiny

Dr. Ayman El-Shibiny is a Professor of Biomedical Sciences and the Director of the Center for Microbiology and Phage Therapy (CMP) and Director of Center of Scientific Excellence for Food Research and Analysis (cSEFRA). He earned his Ph.D. in Food Microbiology from the University of Nottingham, UK, in 2006.
Before joining Zewail City, Dr. El-Shibiny held several postdoctoral fellowships at prestigious institutions, including the University of Nottingham (UK), Cardiff University (UK), and The Evergreen State College (USA). As an expert microbiologist, his research spans a broad range of topics critical to food safety and human health. His primary expertise lies in phage therapy, where his current research focuses on the therapeutic application of bacteriophages as a viable alternative for treating and controlling antibiotic-resistant pathogens across the food, veterinary, and clinical sectors.

Dr. Rachel Tribe

Professor Rachel M. Tribe is Professor of Maternal & Perinatal Science and Vice Dean for Research at King’s College London. She was recently awarded a fellowship ad eundem by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists for her contributions to women’s health and serves as European Director for PREBIC Global. Originally trained as a physiologist (University of Sheffield and University of London), she has specialised in pregnancy research for over 25 years, publishing extensively, supervising 26 PhD/MD students, and mentoring more than 50 clinicians and researchers. Her work focuses on improving maternal and neonatal outcomes through translational science, with expertise in mechanisms of labour, preterm birth, host-immune response, vaginal microbiome, biomarkers, multiomics, and risk prediction modelling. She leads large pregnancy-child cohort studies and is committed to improving maternal and neonatal outcomes globally through innovative science and interdisciplinary partnerships and collaborations.

Dr. Nader Al-Dewik

Dr. Al-Dewik is the Director of Translational and Precision Medicine Research at WWRC, Principal Investigator at Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), and A/Professor in Human Genetics, Genomic and Precision Medicine Program, Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) in the State of Qatar.
As a key principal investigator, Dr. Al-Dewik has successfully gained several research grants funded by different funding bodies through collaboration with several international teams on translational molecular genetics and precision medicine projects. His major research interests are in addressing high-priority maternal and neonatal health matters.
Dr. Al-Dewik has presented original research findings at several local, regional, and international conferences and published them in peer-reviewed journals. He has published over 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals, book chapters, and abstracts.

Dr. Ibrahim Shatat

Ibrahim Shatat, MD, MSCR
Senior Attending Physician, Sidra Medicine
Before joining Sidra, Dr. Shatat was the Division Chief of Pediatric Nephrology and Hypertension at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) where he led the division to rank among the top pediatric nephrology programs in the US. He also served as the director of the pediatric hypertension program and the medical director of the acute dialysis and pediatric hemapheresis units at MUSC.
Dr. Shatat held multiple national and international positions:
• American Society of Pediatric Nephrology Foundation Board of Directors.
• Elected member of the executive committee of the International Pediatric Hypertension Association.
• Chair, American Society of Pediatric Nephrology Communications and Website Committee.
• American Society of Pediatric Nephrology Foundation Fundraising Committee.
• Associate Editor, Frontiers in Pediatric Nephrology Journal.
• Research Associate Professor and Clinical Associate Professor at the Medical University of South Carolina (Charleston, SC) and Weill Cornell Medical College.
• Clinical Professor, adjunct, Qatar University school of medicine.
• Dr. Shatat has more than 60 peer reviewed manuscripts, book chapters and review articles in the field of pediatric nephrology and hypertension.
• Dr. Shatat has been voted (by US News and World Report, Castle Connolly and Vitals) among the top Pediatric Nephrologists and as a Patient Choice Doctor in the United States of America.
• Principal investigator and section reviewer on NIH, institutional, pharmaceutical and private entities grants.
• In 2016, Dr. Shatat was recognized among the Top 5% honored professionals in the United States.
Dr. Shatat serves as an abstract reviewer, session Chair, and Speaker at the Pediatric Academy Societies and the American Society of Pediatric Nephrology annual Meetings.

Dr. Mamoun Elawad

Prof. Mamoun Elawad, MD, MBBS, FRCPCH, MRCP, CCST
Prof. Elawad has his training in Pediatric gastroenterology at Great Ormond Street, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, Oxford John Radcliff Hospital and King’s College Hospital. He worked as a consultant Paediatric gastroenterologist at University Hospital of Wales and Birmingham Children’s Hospital before he rejoined Great Ormond Street Hospital in 2002 as a consultant gastroenterologist and senior lecturer at the University College of London. He joined Sidra Medicine in 2014 as a Chief of Paediatric Gastroenterology and a section head of inflammatory bowel disorders.

He has been the head of the department at Great Ormond Street since 2007 until he joined Sidra Medicine. During this period, he led the department to the largest ever expansion and restructure of the service to attract 3 main nationally funded programs that included gut rehabilitation and small bowel transplant, intestinal pseudo-obstruction. He then became the founder and the director of the first worldwide pioneering program for Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant for autoimmune and inflammatory gut diseases. He was also the director of the department international collaboration “ImproveCareNow” at GOSH and later on at Sidra Medicine, which involves more than 100 pediatric gastrointestinal units in the United States, with GOSH & Sidra Medicine being the only centers outside the United States. This collaboration sets the standards of management of children with inflammatory bowel diseases and is a unique quality improvement and research tool that attracts more than 30,000 patients. He was also the co-founder of the European GENIUS group that oversees the diagnosis and the treatment of children with Early onset inflammatory bowel diseases.

Prof. Elawad was a member of the clinical committee of ImproveCareNow, member of the council of CAPGAN and member of the inflammatory bowel disease working group for BSPGHAN. He was also the co-author of the worldwide strategy for implementation of pediatric endoscopy produced by the FISPGHAN.

Prof. Elawad has been a professor of clinical pediatrics at Qatar University and adjunct professor at WCM Qatar. His main research areas of interest are autoimmune gut disorders, genetics of inflammatory bowel disease, Early Onset Inflammatory Bowel Disease and GI food allergy. He has more than 50 publications in the field of inflammatory bowel disease, molecular genetics of early onset inflammatory bowel disease, Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant for refractory inflammatory bowel diseases and food allergy.

Dr. Majdi Osman

Majdi Osman, MD MPH is a physician-scientist and Senior Clinical Lecturer at the University of Cambridge and Wellcome Sanger Institute researching the role of the gut microbiome in early life and the development of novel live biotherapeutics. He undertook his training at University College London (UCL), Harvard Medical School, and Boston Children’s Hospital. With expertise across translational microbiome science, clinical trials, and commercial development he led OpenBiome's translational microbiome program scaling fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) for C. difficile infection, providing over 70,000 treatments across the US and launching >40 clinical trials of FMT, shaping international clinical practice guidelines, and publishing widely, including in NEJM, Nature, and the Lancet. Dr. Osman sits on the board of the African Research Excellence Fund and has a deep commitment to capacity building for microbiome research globally.

Dr. Gregory Tasian

MD, MSc, MSCE

Dr. Tasian a tenured Professor of Surgery and Epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. His research program is based at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), where he is a practicing pediatric urologist specializing in the surgical and medical management of children with kidney stone disease. He is the Director of the Pediatric KIDney Stone (PKIDS) Care Improvement Network and leads CHOP’s Center for Outcomes REsearch in Surgery (CORES). His research group conducts randomized clinical trials and prospective observational studies to generate knowledge that improves outcomes for individuals with kidney stone disease across the lifespan. His research program has been continuously supported by the NIH and PCORI and he has published over 150 research articles in leading journals. His research has been covered extensively in the press, including The New York Times, The Guardian, and CNN.

Dr. Hatim Abdelrahman

Dr. Hatim Abdelrahman is a senior pediatric gastroenterologist and the program director of the Pediatric Gastroenterology Fellowship at Sidra Medicine. He is also an associate professor of pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar. A graduate of Khartoum University in Sudan, Dr. Hatim holds the Arab Board in Pediatric Specialization, MRCP (UK), MRCPCH (UK), FRCPCH, and a master's in health professional education. His clinical and research interests include pediatric hepatology, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), infant and child nutrition, and medical education.

Dr Nik Pai

Dr. Nikhil Pai is a double board-certified pediatric gastroenterologist, certified in general pediatrics and pediatric gastroenterology by both the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and the American Board of Pediatrics. He is also a Certified Nutrition Support Clinician and a Fellow of NASPGHAN.

Dr. Pai’s clinical expertise includes pediatric intestinal failure and short bowel syndrome, complex nutritional disorders, inflammatory bowel disease, and metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease. He is experienced in diagnostic and therapeutic endoscopy, FibroScan® liver assessment, and advanced enteral and parenteral nutrition support for medically complex children.

He completed fellowship training at Boston Children’s Hospital and additional obesity medicine training at Massachusetts General Hospital. Prior to joining CHOP, Dr. Pai served nearly a decade at McMaster Children’s Hospital, where he led the Intestinal Rehabilitation Program and founded a multidisciplinary Pediatric Nutrition Advisory Committee. At CHOP, he practices across inpatient and outpatient settings and is leading the development of the hospital’s pediatric donor stool bank—the first of its kind in the United States—supporting both clinical care and research applications of fecal microbiota transplantation.

Dr. Annalisa Terranegra

PhD

Dr. Terranegra obtained her MSc degree in Biological Sciences cum laudae in 2000 at the University of Siena, Italy, PhD in Molecular Medicine in 2007 at the University of Milan, Italy and Post-graduate Diploma cum laudae in Nutritional Sciences at the University of Milan, Italy in 2015.

Before to join Sidra Medicine in 2014, Dr. Terranegra achieved strong experience in molecular biology and genetics during her career at the University of Milan, Italy, as a post-graduation fellow (2001-2003), PhD fellow (2003-2006) and post-Doc fellow (2007-2010). Dr. Terranegra covered a consultant position in genetics at San Raffaele Hospital, Milan, Italy (2010-2012) and a research fellow position in nutrition at San Paolo Hospital, Milan, Italy (2013-2014).
Dr. Terranegra also has extensive teaching experience as Assistant Professor in Nephrology (2007-2010) and in Dietetic Sciences and Technologies (2010-2013) at University of Milan, Italy; Lecturer in Molecular Medicine PhD course (2009-2011) at University of Milan, Italy. Dr. Terranegra currently covers the position of adjunct Assistant Professor, since 2015, in the college of Health and Life Sciences at Hamad bin Khalifa University, Qatar and adjunct Assistant Professor, since 2018, in the College of Health Sciences at Qatar University, Qatar.

Dr. Souhaila Al Khodor

MSc, PhD

Dr. Al Khodor received her Bachelor’s degree in Medical Lab technology from the Faculty of Public Health at the Lebanese University in 2001. Soon after, she started her master’s degree in microbiology and Immunology at the American University of Beirut (2002-2004). Dr. Al Khodor received her second master’s degree and PhD in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, USA (2005-2008). Before joining Sidra, Dr. Al Khodor worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the Signaling systems Unit, laboratory of Systems Biology, at the National Institute of Allergy and infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Maryland, USA. Dr. Al Khodor’s laboratory at Sidra Medicine focuses on using multi-omics (metagenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics) and computational biology aiming to understand the molecular mechanisms underlying various diseases. Her primary goal is to identify early biomarkers for disease prediction. With a special focus on pregnancy complications (mainly preterm birth and Gestational Diabetes Mellitus) and complex pediatric disorders such as Inflammatory Bowel Disease, her research at Sidra Medicine has attracted around 17 million QAR in external funds. Dr. Al Khodor is an adjunct Faculty at the College of Health & Life Sciences in Hamad Bin Khalifa University. She has over 77 peer-reviewed publications. She currently serves as the Section Editor for Metagenomics in the Journal of Translational Medicine and a speciality chief editor at Frontiers journal.