Organizers

Mohamed Bouaouina is an Associate Teaching Professor at Carnegie Mellon University Qatar (CMU-Q). Mohamed graduated with a PhD in physiology and physiopathology from Paris VI Pierre and Marie Curie University (France) in 2005. He did his postdoc at Yale University investigating molecular mechanisms of integrin regulation. In 2013, he joined the Biological Sciences program at CMUQ as Teaching Faculty. As a cell biologist, Mohamed carries out his research on cancer cell adhesion and migration and focuses his teaching on cell, developmental and cancer biology. Mohamed developed an interest in teaching evolutionary biology to undergraduate students. He strives to bridge the divide between science and faith in a multicultural environment. He received the 2020 Wimmer Faculty Fellowship for the Development of Teaching.

Kuei-Chiu Chen is Professor of Biology at Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar (WCM-Q). She received her Ph.D. in biology from New York University and master’s degrees in zoology from University of Texas at Austin and in marine miology from National Sun Yat-Sen University in Taiwan. She has taught biology at UCLA and Cornell University in New York. Since joining the Qatar campus in 2012, she has focused her teaching on research competency in students through scientific literature, experimental design, and scientific communication. In her teaching of biology, she weaves evolutionary concepts throughout the curriculum from molecules to populations and species. Funded by Qatar National Research Fund and WCM-Q, her research focuses on the biodiversity and conservation of fauna in Qatar using mostly molecular data. With both teaching and student-centered research, she has received multiple awards in teaching excellence and being the best research mentor at WCM-Q.

Becky Cramer is an evolutionary biologist and ornithologist. After earning her PhD from Cornell University, she was a postdoc at the University of Oslo Natural History Museum (UiO NHM) and then at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center. She taught biology at Weill Cornell Medicine Qatar for two years, before returning to the UiO NHM as a researcher. In Qatar, she gained new appreciation for desert ecosystems and the exceptional adaptability of plants and wildlife in the Gulf region.