PRECISION MEDICINE
AND THE FUTURE
OF GENOMICS
PMFG 2024 SUMMIT

Dr. Raghib Ali

Professor Raghib Ali is the CEO, Chief Investigator and Chief Medical Officer of Our Future Health; a Clinical Epidemiologist at the University of Cambridge; a Consultant in Acute Medicine at the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust; and Honorary Consultant with the Office for Health Disparities and Improvement.

He graduated from Cambridge University and has been awarded postgraduate degrees in Epidemiology and Public Health from the Universities of London, Cambridge and Oxford and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. He has been involved in population health research since 2004 nationally and globally, working firstly on UK Biobank, then leading studies of cancer incidence by ethnic group in England and India from 2005 to 2013 and established the UAE Healthy Future Study, in 2014, for which he is the principal investigator.

He was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthdays Honours 2022 for services to the NHS and the Covid-19 response and elected as an Honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health, ‘the highest accolade the Faculty can bestow and is awarded to those who have given exceptional service to the science, literature or practice of public health’ in April 2023.

Dr. Nicolas Encina

Nic Encina is the Director of Strategy & Cofounder of the Precision Population Health program at Ariadne Labs, Harvard School of Public Health, and Brigham & Women’s Hospital, and he is also Executive Director & Cofounder of the International Consortium on Newborn Sequencing (ICoNS), which holds an annual conference and is spearheading the harmonization of learnings across global programs. Nic is a successful entre- and intra-preneur, having started a series of successful software companies, biotech companies, and many successful intrapreneurial ventures, such as an innovation lab for PerkinElmer, a Harvard research program, and flagship product lines for publicly traded companies. Nic holds graduate degrees in Stem Cell Biology, Computer Science, and an MBA from Yale, with his graduate work conducted in the BLAST lab of Washington University Medical School, as part of the Human Genome Project.

Hakon Hakonarson

Director, Center for Applied Genomics

Dr. Hakonarson is director of the Center for Applied Genomics and professor of Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. He leads a $40 million commitment from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia to genomically characterize approximately 100,000 children, an initiative that has gained nationwide attention in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Time Magazine, Nature, and Science.

Prof. Chantal Mathieu

Chantal Mathieu is a physician-scientist who has contributed to the field of diabetes and endocrinology through basic and clinical research. Her basic research work focuses on pathogenesis and prevention of type 1 diabetes. Prof. Mathieu’s clinical work involving new products and treatment paradigms in diabetes, such as new insulins, adjunct therapies and diagnosis of gestational diabetes have made her a speaker in international fora. Prof. Mathieu coordinates the European clinical trial network for interventions in type 1 diabetes ‘INNODIA’ and the European project ‘EDENT1FI’ on screening for type 1 diabetes. Prof. Mathieu is president of EASD and vice-president of the European Diabetes Forum.

Dr. Camillo Ricordi

Camillo Ricordi, M.D. is Professor of Surgery, Medicine, Biomedical Engineering, Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Miami, Florida, where he serves as Director of the Cell Transplant Center and Director Emeritus of the Diabetes Research Institute

Ricordi has received numerous honors and awards, including the World Prize in Surgery (University of Geneva), the Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award by the American Diabetes Association, was Knighted by the President of the Republic of Italy. He was inducted into the National Academy of Inventors USA, for contributing outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development, and welfare of society, and was appointed to the Supreme Council of Health (Consiglio Superiore di Sanita’) by the Ministry of Health of Italy. In 2023, he was awarded the Leonardo Da Vinci Award (co-shared with Nobel Prize winners Yamanaka and Semenza - Taormina TaoBuk) and the Venice Golden Lion Award.

Ricordi contributed over 1,170 publications, that received over 54,000 citations, has 114 H-index.

In 2022 he published the best-seller book “IL CODICE DELLA LONGEVITÀ SANA” now available also in its English edition: “THE HEALTHSPAN CODE” (Amazon.com).

Dr. Tawfeg Ben Omran

Dr. BEN-OMRAN is a senior consultant and Division Chief, Genetic and Genomic Medicine at Sidra Medicine and Hamad Medical Corporation. He is a Professor at Weill Cornell Medical College, Qatar & New York-USA. He is also a Distinguished Visiting Scientist at Boston Children’s Hospital-USA.

He contributes to the body of published knowledge in clinical and metabolic genetics, with over 200 published articles in peer reviewed journals, book chapters and abstracts. He is reviewer for many clinical genetics journals.

He is an active clinical researcher, collaborating on projects with local, regional & international communities. He is a lead primary investigator in many high profile research projects & clinical trials.

Dr. Sonia Davila

Dr. Sonia Davila is the Executive Director of Translational Medicine at Sidra Medicine since December 2023. Prior to joining Sidra, Dr Davila was Deputy Director of the SingHealth Duke-NUS Institute of Precision Medicine (PRISM) in addition to Director of Research at the SingHealth Duke-NUS Genomic Medicine Centre, where she worked on advancing gene discovery through genomic approaches, as well as clinical implementation of precision medicine. Dr Davila is a seasoned genomic medicine expert who is committed to advance genomic medicine as a clinical tool capable of benefitting patients across the globe—no matter how rare their disease.

Dr. Mohammad Yousuf Karim

Chief, Division of Hematology/Immunology/Transfusion, at Sidra Medicine and Clinical Professor in Immunopathology, Qatar University. Yousuf studied medicine at Cambridge University, with clinical training at Guy’s & St Thomas’ Hospitals, qualifying in 1993 with Distinctions in Medicine and Pathology. He was a Clinical Lecturer in Immunology at King’s College London 1998-2004, then Consultant Immunologist at Surrey Pathology Services 2004-18 and Clinical Lead in Immunology at Guy's & St Thomas' Hospitals, London 2006-14. He worked for 25 years in the UK National Health Service, before moving to establish the Diagnostic Immunology Laboratory at Sidra in 2018. His early work studied novel diagnostic methods and treatments for SLE, and his current research concerns early recognition and diagnosis of primary and secondary immunodeficiency. He has authored 90 publications and chapters, and received grant awards in autoimmunity and immunodeficiency, totaling £2.5 million. He was Chair of the Clinical Immunology Committee of the British Society for Allergy and Clinical Immunology 2014-17, an Expert Member for the NICE Quality Standards on Drug Allergy in 2015, on the Guidelines Committee of UK-Primary Immunodeficiency Network 2016-18, and is the Country Advisor for the Royal College of Pathologists for Qatar. In 2018, he was the senior author on UK recommendations for hypogammaglobulinemia secondary to B-cell therapies, and has a current grant studying immunodeficiency after rituximab in autoimmunity. He is the co-Lead of the Sidra Immune Dysregulation Clinical Research Program.

Dr. Samir Gupta

Samir Gupta is a Professor of Neonatology at Durham University, UK, and a Fellow at the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit, Oxford University, United Kingdom. He is the Division Chief of Neonatology, a Quaternary Care neonatal unit at Sidra Medicine (Children’s Hospital), Qatar.

He is a Fellow of Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health and Fellow of Royal College of Physicians of Ireland. He is member of European steering group of the Neonatologist performed echocardiography (NPE). He is founder and chair of the Neonatologist with interest in Cardiology & Hemodynamics in the UK and has now successfully established Qatar NPE training program at Sidra Medicine in Doha, Qatar.
He is a member of several scientific organizations, including the European Society for Pediatric Research (ESPR) and Society for Pediatric Research (USA). He has authored over 150 articles in indexed peer reviewed journals and books. He has been invited guest editor high impact journals.

He is Chief investigator of Baby-OSCAR trial on patent ductus arteriosus (PDA), (https://www.npeu.ox.ac.uk/baby-oscar). He established 1st global Annual international neonatal cardiology & hemodynamics conference in UK in 2010, which is successfully running to date (www.neonatalcardiology.co.uk)

He has established Neonatal hemodynamics program at Sidra Medicine with a team of clinicians, that has significantly improved neonatal outcomes in surgical, complex and sick newborn infants. He works collaboratively with Pediatric cardiology and fetal medicine division to improve the care of complex cardiac patients admitted to the NICU. Currently, he is working to set up the ‘Cardiac ICU on NICU’’ and expanding the NPE training program internationally. He also advises on various international forums on cardio-respiratory disorders and management and is international expert in this field.

Dr.  Richard Oram

Professor Richard Oram is a Diabetes UK Harry Keen Fellow specializing in Type 1 diabetes at the Institute of Biomedical and Clinical Science and NIHR Exeter Clinical Research Facility. Richard finished his Diabetes UK funded PhD on endogenous insulin production in type 1 diabetes in 2014, he showed that most people with type 1 diabetes still make small amounts of their own insulin. Funded by JDRF, he continues to study the biology of beta cell loss in type 1 diabetes and the impact of persistent beta cell function on complications, including hypoglycemia. His Harry Keen fellowship and the Helmsley Charitable Trust fund Richard and Tim Tree (KCL) to study the causes of a rare subtype of extremely early onset type 1 diabetes - diagnosed under the age of 1 year. This overlaps with work with Sarah Richardson, Noel Morgan, Andrew Hattersley and Tim McDonald to better define endotypes of type 1 diabetes.

With other collaborators, has developed a cheap, simple method to assess genetic risk in type 1 diabetes – a T1D genetic risk score (T1D GRS). He has shown this can be used as a diagnostic test to differentiate type 1 and type 2 diabetes, and with Kash Patel has shown it can be used to identify monogenic diabetes. Collaborating with Bill Hagopian (PNRI, Seattle), he recently improved the T1D GRS to include more HLA alleles and their interactions.

Richard is testing the utility of the T1D GRS for prediction of Type 1 diabetes. Funded by JDRF, with Bill Hagopian, he is investigating combining genetic information with longitudinal biomarkers to better predict type 1 diabetes and other autoimmune diseases from birth in the NIH funded TEDDY study. Richard is working with Bill Hagopian to test a newborn genetic screen with autoantibody monitoring follow up to prevent childhood diabetic ketoacidosis in the CASCADE study. Recently, Richard spent a period of his training at the University of Alberta with the world leading clinical islet transplant and renal transplant programs.

Dr. Arash Rafii

Arash Rafii is a Professor of OB-GYN and Genetic Medicine. His work mainly focused on women cancer and predictive medicine. After 15 years at Weill Cornell Medicine he founded ScieNFT an open source platform for sharing science assets. He has published more than 120 studies and is the founder of the french society of predictive medicine as well as on the board of the french society for gynécologie oncology.  His current research and clinical practice focuses on cancer care and overall women well-being.

Dr. Essam M. Abdelalim

Dr. Abdelalim holds the position of Senior Scientist at QBRI and serves as an Associate Professor at HBKU. His academic journey includes obtaining a PhD in Medical Science from Shiga University of Medical Science in Japan, followed by a role as an Assistant Professor at the same institution.
Since March 2014, Dr. Abdelalim has been instrumental in establishing Qatar's pioneering pluripotent stem cell program at QBRI, with a primary focus on diabetes research. His research endeavors utilize human pluripotent stem cells to decipher the mechanisms behind diabetes development while striving to produce functional pancreatic cells for prospective therapeutic applications. His team has successfully generated over 100 iPSC lines sourced from a diverse pool of patients with both monogenic and polygenic forms of diabetes. Furthermore, they have innovated novel methodologies for differentiating stem cells into insulin-secreting and insulin-target cells.

Dr. Abdelalim chairs the Steering Committee of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI)-QBRI Agreement, overseeing the collaborative diabetes/stem cell program between HSCI and QBRI. He also serves on the editorial boards of esteemed journals like "Stem Cells and Development" and "Frontiers in Endocrinology." He has authored over 70 articles in reputable scientific journals. Dr. Abdelalim's career is marked by numerous research grants and prestigious awards. In addition, as an educator, he teaches the "Stem Cell Biology" course at HBKU. He has mentored 15 graduate students at HBKU, contributing significantly to their international recognition for outstanding work.

Dr. Younes Mokrab

Professor Younes Mokrab is Principal Investigator, acting director of Population Genomics Medicine and Lead of Neuroscience Research Program at Sidra Medicine. Also, he is adjunct Professor of Biomedical Sciences at Qatar University. Prof. Mokrab obtained a BSc in Genetics from the University of Sheffield, UK (2003), a PhD in Bioinformatics from Prof. Tom Blundell lab, University of Cambridge, UK (2007), followed by a postdoctoral fellowship from Prof. Mark Sansom Lab, University of Oxford (2010). Next, he moved to the pharmaceutical industry, initially Lonza Biologics performing in silico bio-pharmaceuticals engineering and subsequently Eli Lilly where he led research in early-stage drug discovery in various areas of neuropsychiatry. Upon joining Sidra in 2015, Dr Mokrab helped establish research programs in population and medical genetics in particular in neurodevelopmental disorders, co-founded the Qatar Genome Program Research Consortium and established links with various international consortia. His lab’s expertise lies in genomics/bioinformatics and data science especially long-read sequencing and multiomics. Over the past decade, his group has sequenced hundreds of genomes for patients and family members across the Middle East, leading gene discovery using state of the art technologies, as well as landmark studies on population structure, genome references and transcriptomics. Prof. Mokrab serves on multiple leadership roles at Sidra and outside and has co-chaired and spoke at multiple national and international conferences. Dr Mokrab is a co-author of > 50 publications in top tier including Nature and Cell journals and is the recipient of multiple grants and awards.

Dr. Ian Pople

Dr. Ian Pople is a graduate of Sheffield University, UK and did his neurosurgical training in Leeds, Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, Bristol and Memphis USA where he did his fellowship in Pediatric Neurosurgery at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital and St Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Prior to joining Sidra Medicine as the Chief of Neurosurgery, Dr. Pople was Senior Pediatric Neurosurgeon at Bristol Royal Hospital for Children, UK, where he led the development of the Epilepsy Surgery and SDR services for Children and performed over 2000 pediatric neurosurgical procedures. For the first 20 years of his career he was a consultant neurosurgeon at Frenchay Hospital in Bristol dealing with over 500 cases a year including all types and head and spinal trauma.

Dr Ian has a specialist interest in complex hydrocephalus, neuro-endoscopy, epilepsy and brain tumors. Throughout his career as a neurosurgeon he has maintained a strong interest in clinical research with over 70 publications to date and serving on the Executive Commottee of the Society for Research into Hydrocephalus and Spina Bifida for 20 years. He has been leading projects into new treatments for hydrocephalus in premature infants in the UK and more recently at Sidra Medicine in Qatar, where he was awarded a Research Grant.

Dr. Medhat Askar

Medhat Askar, MD, PhD, MSHPE, FRCPath, F(ACHI), D(ABMLI), HCLD(ABB) is the Associate Vice President for Clinical Affairs and Professor of Immunology at the College of Medicine at Qatar University. He also serves as the Division Head of Clinical Immunology at the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at Hamad Medical Corporation, Doha, Qatar, a Clinical Professor in the Department of Medical Education at Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine, Bryan, TX and the Advisor for the Clinical Services at The National Marrow Donor Program, Minneapolis, MN. Before Joining Qatar University he served as the Director of Transplant and Genomics Core, COVID-19 Testing and Stem Cell Processing Laboratories at Baylor University Medical Center, Dallas, TX and Clinical Consultant in the Department of Laboratory Medicine of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY.

Currently Dr. Askar is the Treasurer of The Transplantation Society (TTS); Treasurer of The Association of Medical Laboratory Immunologists (AMLI); Board Member of the Worldwide Network for Blood & Marrow Transplantation; Councilor of the International HLA & Immunogenetics Workshops; Chair of the Histocompatibility Committee of the Foundation for Accreditation on Cellular Therapy (FACT) and member of the Laboratory Practice Committee of the International Society of Cell and Gene Therapy (ISCT). Previously he served as President of The American Society for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics (ASHI); President of The American College of the Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics (ACHI), a member of the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee of the United States United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), and a Board Member of The Arab Society of Histocompatibility & Immunogenetics (ARSHI). I published and lectured on various topics of transplant Immunology, cell and gene therapy, quality systems and accreditation, health professions education and leadership in major transplant conferences and leading academic institutions across 6 continents.