Ahmed Moustafa

Biography

Dr. Ahmed Moustafa is a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor of Genomics and Bioinformatics in the Department of Biology and Biotechnology Graduate Program. Ahmed was originally trained as a computational scientist. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University in 1998. Next, he joined the Arab Academy for Science and Technology as a Software Engineer. In 2000, Ahmed moved to the US, where he joined Kaiser Permanente in Pasadena, California, as a Senior Software Engineer. In 2005, Ahmed joined the Genetics PhD Program at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, where he conducted his research on the functional and evolutionary aspects of the genomes of microbial organisms. Ahmed investigated the role of endosymbiotic and horizontal gene transfers in the evolution of the eukaryotic cell. He also examined the origin and assembly of the biosynthetic pathways of neurotoxins in microbial algae and profiled gene expression patterns in bloom-forming marine microalgae. In 2009, he finished his PhD and started his Post-Doctoral Fellowship at J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) in San Diego, California. To understand the impact of environmental conditions on the genetic composition and diversity of microbial assemblages, Ahmed carried out metagenomic and metatranscriptomic analyses of prokaryotic and eukaryotic microbial communities in the Indian Ocean and Antarctic Lake as a part of the Global Ocean Sampling project. In 2010, Ahmed joined the American University in Cairo as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology. Ahmed has published research articles in prominent scientific journals including Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Current Biology. 

Research Interest

Microbial genomics, metagenomics, genome evolution, comparative genomics, and high-performance computing