I was born in Baghdad, Iraq, and was soon evacuated by the Red Cross to Sweden. When I was 9, my family moved again to the UK. Growing up I was the weakest of my friends, so as soon as I could afford a gym membership I began pursuing lifting obsessively and eventually made it to nationals coaching myself. I was training increasingly hard for little in return, and I wanted to pursue something with more purpose and impact. My mother's close call with cancer made me appreciate how transformative cures can be, and I felt compelled to spend my life making therapeutics for diseases which have none.

Cambridge gave me incredible access and the opportunity to speak with leaders in my field of interest. These conversations led to me doing research making inducible protein aggregation models at Harvard, and using protein aggregation for drug delivery depots at Cambridge.

At 19, I was disappointed that we hadn't succeeded in making any disease-modifying therapeutics for Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, ALS and other neurodegenerative diseases, and wanted to try it myself. I raised $15k from angels and foundations to spend 3 months in George Church’s Lab working on gene therapies for Parkinson’s and adrenoleukodystrophy.

It’s clear in retrospect that biology is and has been the perfect venture for me to take on. It’s been a space for me to get away from challenges in my personal life, has taken me across the world, and has no conceivable ceiling for success.

I believe the information to create the first disease-modifying therapeutic for neurodegenerative disease is already out there, scattered across different mechanistic theories, and I’m spending my next few years trying to find it. Currently, I’m interested in learning as much as possible as fast as possible, and am thinking hard about what that means for my next steps.