Ghada Abdelwahab

Ghada M. Abdelwahab
Research scientist
School of Biological Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology
Email: gabdelwahab3@gatech.edu
B.Sc. Pharmaceutical Sciences, Mansoura University, Egypt
Board Certified Pharmacotherapy Specialist, U.S.A
M.S. Clinical Pharmacy, SCU, Cairo, Egypt
M.S. Pharmacognosy, Mansoura University, Egypt

I am really fond of marine environment as it is untapped source of novel natural products that act as a corner stone of drug manufacturing. So, my master degree in pharmacognosy was on isolation and identification of biologically active compounds from marine-derived fungus isolated from the marine tunicate Phallusia nigra. Then, I started my Ph.D. in Egypt on elicitation of marine-derived actinomycetes and fungi under supervision of Prof. Ashraf T. Khalil and Prof. Usama Ramadan Abdelmohsen. The elicitation comes into very potent anti-MRSA results and a first isolation of the
natural bio-valuable compound (bromo-papaverine) which its biosynthesis will be explored. We aim at maximizing the results by chemical complementation through bringing the power of genetics to chemistry. Currently, I am joining Kubanek Lab as a research scientist ,working on the MicroED project which aims at discovering new bioactive natural products using a combination of modern techniques (including NMR, MS, molecular modeling) and a new approach based on microelectron diffraction (microED) in the lab of Hosea Nelson at Caltech in California. Also, metabolomics-based novel chemistry for some uninvestigated marine sample collections and some studies related to chemical ecology will be performed. The proposal is extremely promising with a great aim and it is very interesting to me.