Dr. Manal Alaamery
Dr. Manal Alaamery, is curently the Chairman of Innovation and Entrepreneurship Department (IED) and Head of the Developmental Medicine Department (DMD) at the King Abdullah International Medical Research Center (KAIMRC) at the Ministry of National Guard-Health Affairs (MNGHA). She is also the director of the satellite lab for the National Saudi Genome Program at KAIMRC, and a Principal Investegator at the Center of Exellence for Biomedicine (CEBM) at King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) and Brigham Woman’s Hospital (BWH) in association with Harvard Medical School. Formerly, she was an instructor at the Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital Boston.
As the chairman of IED, she is responsible for the ongoing Innovation activities at KAIMRC and the MNGHA. The IED was established in 2019 to serve the Kingdom’s vision 2030 and further enhance its resources and economic stability. Dr. Alaamery provides leadership in the identification and KAIMRC-wide adoption of innovation metrics to optimize KAIMRC’s research and innovation portfolio. Some of the IED activities include: creating Innovation and entrepreneurship programs specifications, documentation, and materials, registering patents, and trademarks at patent offices around the world, patent licensing and commercializing, maximizing research return on investment through supporting the creation of Spin-offs.
As the Head of DMD, Dr. Alaamery’s research investigates the causes of different genetics disorders such as understanding the genetic causes of Intelecultal disabilities and non syndromic congental heart defect in the Saudi population with the goal of identifing novel genes and therapeutic targets for rare disorders. In addtion, with the collobrators from BHW and KACST, she and her team are studying the role of sphingolipid metabolism in neurodegeneration to identify candidate targets for therapeutic intervention for different neurdegenrtaive disorders such as multiple sclerosis. Furthermore, Dr. Almaamery is intersted in developeing nanoparticles that can overcome the problems of drug delivery through oral or intravenous routes such as the difficult penetration of BBB, low bioavailability, short half-life and prolonged treatment in different diseases.
Dr. Alaamery received her clinical and postgraduate training at Harvard Medical School Genetics Program. She completed her clinical training at the Laboratory of Molecular Medicine (LMM) at Harvard focused on the areas of Hypertrophic and Dilated Cardiomyopathies, Neurological disorders, Muscular disorders, Hearing loss, Noonan spectrum, Pharmacogenetics. Dr. Alaamery also holds a Doctoral (Ph.D.) degree in Molecular Genetics/Biology from Boston College and a Master of Science degree in Clinical Microbiology from Thomas Jefferson University.
During Dr. Alaamery’s work and career, she has established herself as a research leader, and published in prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journals as well as patenting a number of novel ideas. Dr. Alaamery also taught several courses, led many initiatives and held several committee positions. In addtion, Dr. Alaamery is the recipient of several awards including the Dubai Harvard Foundation for Medical Research Award, Harvard Parteners In Excellence Award for team work, the Donald J. White Teaching Award at Boston College, and the Ambassador Award for academic excellance .