Dr. Arwa Kohela received her BSc degree with honours in Biotechnology from the Faculty of Science at Cairo University. Having developed a great interest in the field of molecular biology, she then moved to the Netherlands for her postgraduate studies. She was awarded the Radboud UMC St fund and RSP scholarships to perform her MSc degree in Molecular Mechanisms of Disease at Radboud University. She then joined the Hubrecht Institute to start her Ph.D. in Molecular Cardiology. Her work focused on studying different aspects of cardiac remodeling during genetic and ischemic heart disease. This involved using human stem cell-derived cardiac cultures, mouse models and single-cell RNA sequencing technologies to understand the mechanisms of heart disease and identify key factors for therapeutic intervention. She worked on multiple collaborative projects and her work was published in several high-impact journals. Furthermore, the research findings of her main project allowed the identification of a novel gene involved in the progression of a detrimental genetic heart disease, for which a European patent was filed. She further presented her work at several international conferences and received prestigious awards at the International Society for Heart Research Meeting (Amsterdam), Heart Failure Association Winter Meeting (Les Diablerets), Dutch-German Molecular Cardiology Meeting (Gottingen) and Translational Cardiovascular Research Meeting (Utrecht). Dr. Kohela is now a full-time Assistant Professor at the School of Biotechnology at Nile University.
At Nile University, Dr. Arwa is also working with members of the School of Biotechnology on the design and preparation of the first diploma and master’s program in Pharmacogenomics in Egypt, which is in a consortium funded by ERASMUS. The diploma and master’s program will have a world-class curriculum revised by renowned European universities and will be available to graduates of medicine, pharmacy and biotechnology in Egypt and Lebanon.