Ahmad Alonazi

Dr. Ahmad Alonazi, MD, Chief Medical Officer of Wateen.

Ahmed Al-Barrak

​Professor of Medical Informatics at The College of Medicine, King Saud University. The founding Chairman of the Medical Informatics Unit and the Director for E-learning at The College of Medicine, the former Director of Computer and Information Department (CIO) in King Saud University Medical City. The founding dean for The Health Sciences College at the Saudi Electronic University, and former vice president for Quality Planning and development. Currently, the chairman for the Public Health Program at King Saud University, and the chairman for the Medical Informatics and E-learning unit in the College of Medicine, in addition, the Chairman for The Health Informatics Research Chair in King Saud University. Area of research and interest includes e-Health, e-Learning, e-Education, Medical Education, Health Informatics, Nursing Informatics, Hospitals Information Systems, Quality Management, Health care Planning and Development, Academic and Executive Coaching. Prof Albarrak has been awarded several excellence prizes and awards for his research, projects, and services including the first award in information technology projects, first award in engineering projects by Riyadh techno Vale, KSU. Chairman and scientific committee member for national and international symposiums and conferences. 

Fadwa Attiga

Dr. Fadwa Attiga is a cancer researcher and a founding member of Global Oncology Inc., a private equity-owned company aiming to establish comprehensive affordable quality cancer care centers in underserved markets both in Africa and Asia. Previously, she was the Chief Research Officer of the Evercare Group that manages $1 billion health fund in Asia and Africa.  As the Chief Research Officer of the King Hussein Cancer Center in Jordan, she led efforts to establish several programs in translational and clinical research that helped enroll patients in international industry-sponsored clinical trials. She spearheaded efforts to establish the first healthcare research think tank in the Arab World at the King Hussein Institute for Biotechnology and Cancer in collaboration with the USA National Cancer Institute and the Pharma industry. The research spanned bioethics, health economics, medical anthropology, and health policy to help shape the cancer control plans and improve cancer early detection in several MENA countries. Dr. Attiga is a pioneer in promoting research initiatives in cancer registries, biobanks, and bioinformatics to evaluate cancer care outcomes and its cost-effectiveness in local populations. She holds a Ph.D. in Oncology from the George Washington University, USA. She is a Certified Professional in Healthcare Quality (CPHQ) and a Project Management Professional (PMP).

Majid Al-Madi

Dr. Almadi obtained an MBBS degree from King Saud University and completed his training in internal medicine and gastroenterology at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. He also completed two years of training in therapeutic endoscopy and EUS at McGill and obtained a Master’s Degree in Clinical Epidemiology as well as training in the Clinical Investigator program from the same university.
 
Currently, he is an Associate Professor of Medicine at King Saud University and the Vice Dean for Postgraduate Studies and Research at the College of Medicine at King Saud University. Dr. Almadi is the current president of the Saudi Gastroenterology Association and is an Associate Editor for the Saudi Journal of Gastroenterology (SJG) and deputy editor of the Journal of Nature and Science of Medicine (JNSM).

Malak Abed Al-Thagafi

Dr. Malak Abed AlThagafi is an American board-certified physician-scientist in Clinical Pathology, Anatomical Pathology, Neuropathology, and Molecular Genetics Pathology. She studied and worked in world-renowned universities like Georgetown, University of California San Francisco, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, and Harvard. She is a national and international awards winner in her field and published over 100 original and conference papers. She is selected in 2018 and 2019 as one of the most powerful people around the globe in Pathology and lab medicine by the British pathologist magazine. Currently, She is the director and primary investigator of the Saudi Human genome lab at King Fahad medical city (KFMC) in Riyadh, an Assistant research professor at King Abdulaziz city of science and technology (KACST) and founder of CID ( Genomic Startup Company). Her hope is to improve the application of personalized medicine and targeted therapy.

Nasser Al-Jehani

Dr. Nasser Aljehani is a Family Medicine Physician and Clinical Informatician at King Fahad Medical City in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
He graduated from King Saud University Faculty of Medicine in 2008. He then finished a year of fellowship in Quality Improvement and Patient Safety from Baylor College of Medicine in the United States, where he worked with the Senior Vice President of Performance Improvement. He was granted the American Board of Family Medicine after he finished his training at Texas Tech University in the United States, where he also served as Chief Resident. During his year as Chief Resident, he designed and implemented a new on-call system that focused on better and safer care for patients as well as improved the training experience for the residents.
After his residency, he joined The Ohio State University and Nationwide Children’s Hospital in the United States as a fellow where he finished a two-year fellowship in Clinical Informatics. He accomplished multiple modules implementations and quality projects that focused on patient safety and lowering cost. Currently, he is leading the implementation of Epic system, the best ranked Electronic Medical Record in KLAS, in King Fahad Medical City, the largest medical city in the Middle East.
Dr. Aljehani is interested in driving value-based clinical care through leveraging technology and the use of data in medicine.

Robert Hoehndorf

​Robert Hoehndorf is an Assistant Professor in Computer Science at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Thuwal. His research focuses on the applications of symbolic AI in biology and biomedicine, with a particular emphasis on integrating and analyzing heterogeneous, multimodal data. Robert has contributed to the PhenomeNET system for ontology-based prioritization of disease genes using model organism phenotypes, the AberOWL ontology repository, and the DeepGO system for protein function prediction. He is an associate editor for the Journal of Biomedical Semantics, BMC Bioinformatics, Applied Ontology, and editorial board member of the journal Data Science. He published over 90 papers in journals and international conferences.

Takashi Gojobori

Prof. Gojobori is a molecular biologist, he is a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2006) and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) (2005). In 2006 Pope Benedict XVI appointed Prof. Gojobori as a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. He has received the Gaetano Salvatore Gold Medal from Italy (2004). He was awarded the Kihara Memorial Foundation Academic Award in 1995 and the Purple Ribbon Medal and the Medal of Honor of Japan in 2009 for a series of his researches to pioneer the early age of “Molecular Evolutionary Studies using Genome Information”

He is the Founding Editor of the journal Genome Biology and Evolution, the Executive Editor of the journal Gene, Academic Editor of FEBS Letters, Associate Editor of Molecular Biology and Evolution and PLOS Genetics, and Section Editor of Computer Genomics in BMC Genomics. He has served on the editorial boards of 6 international journals including GigaScience. Previously he was the Editor of Journal of Molecular Evolution for 8 years (1995–2003). He is leader of the Japanese team of the H-Invitational international consortium who was tasked with creating a database linking the 21,037 validated human genes to their biological function

Gojobori has worked extensively on the rates of synonymous and non-synonymous substitutions, positive selection, horizontal gene transfer, viral evolution, genome evolution, and comparative gene expression. In recent years, he has focused on the evolution of the brain and Central nervous system.

Gojobori has served as the Program Director of the Council for Science and Technology Policy (CSTP) of the Government of Japan and is the Science Officer of the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports, Culture, and Technology (MEXT). He has contributed to the DDBJ/GenBank/EMBL database construction as well as the H-Invitational human gene database.