Sara Al-Khawaga, MD, PhD
Dr. Sara Saleh Al-Khawaga earned her medical degree from Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar (WCM-Q), receiving several honors during her studies. She later completed her Ph.D. in biological and biomedical sciences from Hamad bin Khalifa University (HBKU) in 2019, where she received the National Educational Excellence in Research Award (His Highness The Amir Educational Excellence Award) in 2021. The focus of her Ph.D. was on the use of next-generation sequencing (NGS) and human pluripotent stem cell technologies. She has successfully published multiple high-impact publications in pluripotent stem cell technology, inflammatory skin diseases, and NGS.
Dr. Al-Khawaga is an alumna of Harvard Medical School, where she completed the Cancer Biology and Therapeutics (CBT) program during her postdoctoral fellowship. She further completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Clinical Research Center in Sidra Medicine, focusing on mesenchymal stem cells isolated from adipose tissue (2015-2018). Dr. Al-Khawaga then joined the dermatology and venereology residency program at HMC as chief resident and completed a residency program at the Department of Dermatology and Venereology at Rumailah Hospital, HMC. She is currently leading the GeriDerm ( Geriatric Dermatology Service) and the first National Clinical Practice Guidelines for the management of Stevens-Johnson Syndrome (SJS)/Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis (TEN) in Qatar.
Dr. Al-Khawaga was recently appointed assistant professor in clinical dermatology at WCM-Q and an adjunct associate clinical professor in the College of Health and Life Sciences at HBKU.