Rania Siam, MBBCH, PhD

Professor of Medical Foundations, Microbiology
Rania Siam
Contact Information

rsiam@rossu.edu

Biography

Professor Dr. Siam is a physician, scientist, and educator. She has been successful in securing external grant funding, amassing over 7 million USD. Dr. Siam's scholarly contributions include co-authorship of 58 original peer-reviewed scientific publications, which have been published in journals, including Cell, EMBO, Lancet, and Journal of Biological Chemistry. Additionally, she has successfully guided over 50 MSc and 10 Ph.D. theses within biomedical sciences, biotechnology, and nanotechnology.

Most recently Dr. Siam was the founding director of a biotechnology graduate program in an American Liberal Art school, and then later served as the chair of the biology department in the same institute where she headed the departments attainment of Natural Science accreditation through the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET).

She serves on the editorial boards of esteemed journals, including Public Library of Science (PLOS)-one, Frontiers in Microbiology, Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing Group), and Methods of Ecology and Evolution (British Ecological Society).  

Siam holds a Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology from McGill University in Montreal, Canada, as well as various post-doctoral positions in several North American institutes including the McGill Oncology Group and Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, Canada, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, Molecular and Cellular Biology Laboratories in La Jolla, CA, and The Scripps Research Institute, Department of Molecular and Experimental Medicine in La Jolla, CA.

Education
  • Undergraduate Degree: [Medical Bachelor and Bachelor of Surgery M.B.B.CH.], [Ain Shams University], [Cairo, Egypt], [1994]
  • Medical/Doctoral Degree: [Doctor of Philosophy Ph.D.], [McGill University], [Montreal, Canada], [2001]
  • Fellowship: Post-doctoral fellowship: Molecular Oncology Group, Royal Victoria Hospital, Montreal, Canada, [2005-2006]
  • Other Degrees/Training:
    • Post-doctoral fellowship: The Salk Institute for Biological Sciences, La Jolla, California, USA
    • Post-doctoral fellowship: The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California, USA
Areas of Expertise
  • Microbiology
  • Genomics
  • Molecular and Cell Biology
Publications
  • Abdallah, RZ, et al. "Deciphering the Functional and Structural Complexity of the Solar Lake Flat Mat Microbial Benthic Communities." MSystems, vol. 9, no. 6, 2024, p. e00095-24.  
  • Abdelkhalek, MM, et al. "Recovery of Copper/Carbon Matrix Nanoheteroarchitectures from Recyclable Electronic Waste and Their Efficacy as Antibacterial Agents." RSC Advances, vol. 14, no. 35, 2024, pp. 25750-25758.  
  • Abdelkhalek, MM, et al. "Zeolitic Imidazolate Framework-8 Encapsulated with Mo-Based Polyoxometalates as Surfaces with Antibacterial Activity Against Escherichia Coli." Nanoscale Advances, vol. 6, no. 13, 2024, pp. 3355-3366.  
  • Wu, J., et al. "PLM-ARG: Antibiotic Resistance Gene Identification Using a Pretrained Protein Language Model." Bioinformatics, vol. 39, no. 11, 2023, p. btad690.  
  • Sherif, S., et al. "Optimization Design of Interdigitated Microelectrodes with an Insulation Layer on the Connection Tracks to Enhance Efficiency of Assessment of the Cell Viability." BMC Biomedical Engineering, vol. 5, no. 1, 2023, p. 4.  
  • Elbehery, AHA, et al. "Metagenomic Profiling of Antibiotic Resistance Genes in Red Sea Brine Pools." Archives of Microbiology, vol. 205, no. 5, 2023, p. 195.  
  • Hassaneen, FY, et al. "Impact of Innovative Nanoadditives on Biodigesters Microbiome." Microbial Biotechnology, vol. 16, no. 1, 2023, pp. 128-138.
  • Danko, D., et al. "A Global Metagenomic Map of Urban Microbiomes and Antimicrobial Resistance." Cell, vol. 184, no. 13, 2021, pp. 3376-3393.e17.  
  • Kopf, A., et al. "The Ocean Sampling Day Consortium." Gigascience, vol. 4, 2015, pp. 1-5. "The Metagenomics and Metadesign of the Subways and Urban Biomes (MetaSUB) International Consortium Inaugural Meeting Report." Microbiome, vol. 4, no. 1, 2016, p. 24.  
  • Mohamed, YM, et al. "Isolation and Characterization of a Heavy Metal-Resistant, Thermophilic Esterase from a Red Sea Brine Pool." Scientific Reports, vol. 3, no. 1, 2013, p. 3358.