Younes Mokrab, PhD

Dr Younes Mokrab is principal investigator and head of Medical and Population Genomics Lab, Sidra Medicine. He joined in 2015 from Eli Lilly, where he led computational genomics research at the Neurogenetics Discovery Unit to identify/validate drug targets and stratify patients with neuropsychiatric disorders including Schizophrenia, ALS and Parkinson’s, working closely with Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC). Dr 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, Dr Mokrab helped establish research programs in population and medical genetics and is a co-founding member of the Qatar Genome Program Research Consortium. Also, he co-chaired international meetings including Sidra Functional Genomics and CUDOS. He currently holds academic appointments at WCM-Q and HBKU. Dr Mokrab is a co-author of > 45 publications in top tier including Nature and Cell journals and is the recipient of multiple awards and external grants (> 9.1 m QAR).

Dr Mokrab’s lab is using advanced wet and dry lab methods to study large-scale genomic and health records including EHR and Imaging to explore fine-scale population structure, its impact on disease risk, and the genetic architecture of both rare and complex diseases. His lab has a particular interest in Middle Eastern populations where high level of parental relatedness (consanguinity) is common, notably from Qatar and Arabia. In this regard, he has been working closely with the Qatar Genome Program, Genomics England, TCGA and other international consortia. Furthermore, he is leading a national effort to unravel the genetic architecture of rare neurodevelopmental disorders including epilepsy and the establishment of a national registry and disease cohort. Towards this, he is combining state-of-the-art transcriptomics and long-read sequencing to build genomic references and enhance patient diagnosis and stratification. Dr Mokrab’s lab collaborates with various research and clinical groups at Sidra, with national institutions including HMC, Qatar Biobank, Qatar Genome Project, QBRI, Weil Cornell Medicine as well as international collaborators from Stanford University, University of Washington, and University College London.

Haroon Naeem, PhD