Walaa obtained a Bachelor's degree in Life Sciences at Alfaisal University in 2015, after which she completed a Cancer Biology-Clinical & Translational Oncology Ph.D. degree from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences in Houston, TX (2021), focusing on drug/target discovery in pancreatic cancer. Her Ph.D. work focused on discovering alternative mechanisms of inhibiting the oncoprotein KRAS which is mutated in ~25% of cancers and more than 90% of Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma. This work resulted in discovering of several novel therapeutic targets in KRAS-driven cancers published in Nature Communications and PNAS. In her current role as a post-doctoral associate at MIT, Walaa's project centers around dissecting changes in tumor cell gene expression in response to intrinsic and environmental changes using single-cell genomic approaches such as single-cell RNA sequencing, with the end goal of manipulating pancreatic tumor cells to better respond to chemotherapies.

Faris Alsolamy received a B.Sc. degree in electrical and computer engineering from King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia, in 2012. From February 2013 to August 2015, he worked as an Antenna Engineer with the King Abdulaziz City of Science and Technology (KACST). During that period, he spent most of his time in South Africa working on a collaborative project between KACST and CSIR. His tasks included the design of a wide scanning angle antenna for radar applications. In August 2015, he joined the University of Michigan, receiving an M.A.Sc. and Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering in 2017 and 2022, respectively.

Fahd holds a bachelor's degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Vanderbilt University and a Master's degree in Immunology from Harvard University. In 2021, he received his PhD in Immunology from the University of Washington-Seattle. His doctoral work focused on investigating a human primary immunodeficiency disease called activated PI3Kδ syndrome (APDS) and discovering novel mechanisms underlying immunodeficiencies in APDS patients using a novel mouse model. Currently, Fahd is a postdoctoral fellow at the St. Giles Laboratory of Human Genetics of Infectious Diseases, led by Jean-Laurent Casanova, at The Rockefeller University. His research interests revolve around understating the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying life-threatening viral diseases caused by gene defects. Beyond the significant aim of treating patients with rare undiagnosed immune disorders, his work strives to unravel the genetic and molecular basis of immune mechanisms that could potentially identify novel diagnostic, preventive, and treatment strategies for various viral diseases. Fahd has received numerous awards including a Primary Investigator research grant from The SNF Institute for Global Infectious Disease Research, Innovators Under 35 Award by MIT Technology Review in the MENA region, The Ibn Rushd Postdoctoral Fellowship, and Keystone Symposia Future of Science Fund Scholarship by NIAID/NIH.

Dr. Abdulaziz Bati is currently a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Organic Photonics and Electronics (COPE) at the University of Queensland (UQ), Australia. He received his Ph.D. in Nanotechnology from the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN) at the University of Queensland (UQ) in 2021. Prior to this, he obtained his M.S. and B.Sc. degrees from Flinders University (Australia) and Umm Al-Qura University (Saudi Arabia) in 2017 and 2010, respectively. His research interests mainly focus on exploring various functional nanomaterials for energy-related applications.

Jawaher received her B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from The Pennsylvania State University in 2015. She holds a PhD in the field of synthesis and optical properties of perovskites in 2020, supervised by Prof. Osman Bakr. During her PhD, she was a visiting researcher at the University of Cambridge optimizing the growth of YBCO superconductors. She Received the KAUST Gifted Student Programs (KGSP) scholarship (2011), the NASA Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium scholarship (2013), Ibn Khaldun Postdoctoral Fellowship (2021) and Ibn Rushd Postdoctoral Fellowship award (2022). She's currently a postdoctoral associate in the Quantum Photonics Group at MIT working on quantum photonics/materials for quantum technology. Outside of work, she is an avid tea drinker and she enjoys stargazing and practicing archery.

Nasir Alfaraj joined the department of Electrical and Computer engineering of the University of Toronto as a postdoctoral fellow with a PhD in electrical engineering from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST, 2019). He received both his BSc (2013) and MSc (2015) degrees from Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, United States and KAUST, respectively, in the field of electrical engineering. Dr. Alfaraj is a member of the Helmy Group at the University of Toronto, and his research interests include the growth, fabrication and characterization of CMOS-compatible semiconductor nanostructures and devices for nano-photonic devices/circuits using hybrid metallic architectures. He has authored, co-authored and delivered more than 40 journal articles, invited talks, and conference articles. His work has been highlighted in top scholarly journals, including in the American Institute of Physics' 2015 APL Editors' Picks list and journal cover and featured article, Wiley's Advanced Materials Technologies frontispiece article in the journal's September 2021 issue, and Optica's Publishing Group Optical Materials Express for excellent scientific quality: a representation of the work in the field of materials for integrated optics (December 2021).

Alhanouf is originally from Thuwal. She has completed her undergraduate and Ph.D from Northeastern University, Boston, MA. Her Ph.D project was focused on the use of asymmetric catalysis for the synthesis and study of biologically active natural products. Currently, she is a postdoctoral fellow at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center- Harvard Medical School. Her projects are related to antimicrobial development and characterization.

Dr. Ahmed Mahas received his master’s degree in biochemistry and molecular biology from Wright State University in 2015, where he was awarded the graduate student excellent award for his work on the molecular genetics of melanoma cancer. In 2016, he started his doctoral work at king Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in the laboratory of genome engineering and synthetic biology under the supervision of Prof. Magdy Mahfouz. As a PhD student, he worked on developing and harnessing different CRISPR/Cas platforms for in vivo and in vitro applications, including, genome editing, RNA knockdown, virus interference, and diagnostics. Currently, Dr. Mahas is an Ibn Rushd fellowship scholar and a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Prof. George Church at Harvard Medical School. He is interested in developing innovations in biomedicine and synthetic biology. Particularly, his work focuses on the development of new tools and approaches for understanding and manipulating genomes, transcriptomes, and to enable next-generation cellular engineering, with uses in basic research and therapeutics.