Najib El-Sayed

Dr. Najib El-Sayed is a Professor of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics at the University of Maryland, with a joint appointment in the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at UMIACS. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1993 in Molecular Parasitology and then trained as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of John Donelson at the University of Iowa. In 1998, he joined The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) in Rockville, Maryland where he led the sequencing, annotation, and comparative and functional genomic analyses of several human pathogens. He has been at the University of Maryland since 2006. He currently directs the Brain & Behavior Institute - Advanced Genomic Technologies Core (BBI-AGTC) at the University, as well as the Integrated Life Sciences (ILS) program in the Honors College.

Dr. El-Sayed’s research program is focused on the study of the biology of parasitism and host-pathogen interactions using genomic and bioinformatics approaches with the ultimate goal of better understanding infection and survival mechanisms. These approaches include the development and application of molecular, computational and genomic tools. In the long term, his research will contribute to better diagnosis, prevention and therapeutics of parasite- and bacteria-caused diseases in humans, animals and plants. He has published over 90 research papers and serves on the editorial boards of BMC Genomics and PLoS One. He also serves on NIH’s Genomics, Computational Biology and Technology (GCAT) study section as well as on the Scientific Advisory Board for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ Genome Sequencing Centers for Infectious Diseases.