Professors
Name: | Sami Alghamdi | |
Title: | Associate Professor of Sustainable Urban Systems | |
Division: | Biological and Environmental Science and Engineering | |
Center membership: | Climate and Livability Initiative | |
Education Profile | Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh, Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2015 M.Sc., Western Michigan University, Civil and Construction Engineering, 2010 B.Sc., King Saud University, Architecture and Building Sciences, 2005 | |
Prof. Al-Ghamdi conducts multidisciplinary research on the complexities of the built environment to mitigate climate change and optimize energy, water, and material consumption. He works on the five pillars of the built environment (Transportation, Water, Energy, Materials, and Indoor Environment) where he quantitatively assesses the impact of urban systems on the environment with the aim of sustainability, resilience, and decarbonization. He is developing computational models to understand the potential contribution to climate change and many other environmental categories. Lastly, he works to enhance infrastructure resilience and communities' capacity to withstand, survive, thrive in, and adapt to natural and climate change stresses and shocks.
Name: | Nouf Laqtom | |
Title: | Assistant Professor of Bioscience | |
Division: | Biological and Environmental Science and Engineering | |
Center membership: | Smart Health Initiative | |
Education Profile | Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Chemical Engineering, Stanford University, 2022 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Biology, Whitehead Institute-MIT, 2019 Lecturer, Division of Genomics and Biotechnology, King Abdulaziz University, 2016 M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Genomics and Pathway Biology, University of Edinburgh, 2013 | |
Prof. Laqtom research interests span from subcellular metabolism to the mechanism of inherited metabolic disease. We aim to 1) discover how a defective lysosome or ER-resident protein contributes to the development of metabolic diseases such as Batten disease 2) Develop molecular tools that allow us to provide cutting-edge knowledge on the ER metabolic composition and better understand their metabolic homeostasis 3) demonstrate novel ER-lysosome contact sites and their functions in cellular homeostasis and 4) develop novel therapeutic strategies and biomarkers for these metabolic diseases. Our experiments are conducted in vivo and in cell culture using several subcellular omics, high-throughput functional genomics, and biochemical techniques.