Biography:

I come originally from Iraq. I began my secondary school education in Baghdad College. In 2006, I moved with my family to Jordan, where I graduated my high school. I then moved to Syria for a degree in dental surgery, which I was unable to complete due to the civil conflict that broke out during my third year there. I came to the UK to do a degree in biomedical science at Cardiff Metropolitan University. Between my undergraduate project, a summer studentship then a Master of Research, I spent a year in the research group of Jorge Erusalimsky, working on a signalling pathway that regulates erythro-megakaryocytic differentiation fate decision. My work earned me a scholarship from the Darwin Trust for a doctoral degree at the Wellcome Centre for Cell Biology, University of Edinburgh, where I was supervised by Tony Ly and Bill Earnshaw. During my Ph.D., we used mass spectrometry-based phosphoproteomics to describe details of the mechanism regulating the ordered phosphorylation of substrates by the kinase CDK1 during cell division. I joined the research group of Ritwick Sawarkar in Cambridge in late 2022 to pursue my interest in understanding the role of post-translational modifications in maintaining cellular proteostasis.