Houari B. Abdesselem, PhD
Dr. Houari Abdesselem obtained his BSc degree in genetics from Oran 1 University in Algeria and completed a BSc degree and a master’s degree in cell and molecular biology at Paris-11 University and Louis Pasteur University in France. In 2005, he moved to Germany for his doctoral studies where he pursued his PhD training in neuroscience under Prof. Claudia Stuermer at the University of Konstanz. His PhD work focused on the function of the NOGO-66 myelin-associated proteins in vertebrate nervous system regeneration.
After completing his PhD training in 2009, he moved to the US to conduct postdoctoral training at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York and at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, where he investigated the role of microRNAs and semaphorin neuronal guidance molecules in the developing nervous system and neuronal cell death. In 2012, he moved to Qatar to join Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar as a postdoctoral research fellow to study the function of SIRT1 protein in obesity, and preadipocyte senescence. In 2016, Dr. Abdesselem was offered the position of laboratory manager at Qatar Biomedical Research Institute (QBRI) to manage the Neurological Disorders Research Center (NDRC) laboratories, and Prof. Omar El Agnaf’s research group working on 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 Parkinson’s disease. Dr. Abdesselem has also managed and established from scratch new NDRC laboratories at Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU). In 2019, Dr. Abdesselem successfully built the new proteomics core lab facility and transferred new proteomics biomarker technologies to QBRI-HBKU, such as OLINK, SENGENICS, and SIMOA. He has successfully led and managed the proteomics core lab facility, which became certified and fully operational in 2020. In addition to his management roles, Dr. Abdesselem has published many peer-reviewed papers in high-impact factor journals.