Dr. Hamdi Mbarek

Dr. Hamdi Mbarek is the Scientific and Industry Partnerships Manager at Qatar Genome. His expertise and research include genetic and epidemiological analyses of complex traits (including behavioral, neuropsychiatric and reproductive traits), the molecular study of complex diseases (cancers and chronic hepatitis B), the genetics of depression, addiction and twinning as a measure of fertility, the use of bioinformatics to analyze high-throughput genomic data, and the relationships between human behavior, lifestyle, traits, diseases and genetics.

Dr. Mbarek leads an international collaborative consortium, the Twinning Genetics Consortium, to study the genetics of twinning and birth weight in twins. After 30 years of research, Dr. Mbarek was the first scientist to find the first genes responsible for dizygotic twinning, and in 2016, his paper was cited in the media in more than 40 countries around the world. This paper was also selected among the best groundbreaking genetics research published in the American Journal of Human Genetics (AJHG) from 2015 and 2016. In 2019, he was nominated for the Prix Galien Research award.

With a strong background in molecular genetics, Dr. Mbarek, assistant professor, also contributed to the teaching of classes on human molecular genetics, omics, and twin research and human genetics at VU University Amsterdam. He acquired extensive laboratory experience and a rich network aboard during his time in Africa, Europe, and Asia.

Dr. Mbarek obtained his PhD in molecular and cellular biology at the University of Évry Val d'Essonne in Paris, France. He completed a first postdoctoral research on the genomics of complex diseases at University of Tokyo in Japan, and a second one on the genetics of psychiatric diseases and genetics of addiction at VU University in the Netherlands.