bio

I arrived in the US at the age of 16 to start college, and since then I've been lucky enough to be living a life I never thought imaginable.

I’m now exploring ideas for what to build next. Most recently, I held chief of staff roles at Arcadia Science and Astera Institute.

Before Arcadia, I was an NIH K00 Fellow at MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research, where I developed new tools to study inhibitory neurons and the brain circuits underlying cognitive deficits in psychiatric disorders. I earned my PhD from Virginia Tech's Translational Biology, Medicine, and Health program, mapping neural circuits between the eye and brain. My journey in science started at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where my professor first encouraged me to consider a research career.

Beyond research, I’m interested in how we organize science and how people and machines can expand our capacity for discovery. This includes how we choose and support questions, how research is shared and built on, and the relationship between science and society. I write and speak about these subjects as well.

I'm a Syrian immigrant, born in Saudi Arabia to a mother from Damascus and a father from Aleppo. In everything I do, I think globally.