Sameh Ali
Dr. Sameh Ali is the Founding Director of the Center for Aging and Associated Diseases, Helmy Institute of Medical Sciences, Zewail City of Science and Technology. He returned to Egypt from the University of California in San Diego in June 2012 to participate in the establishment of one of Egypt's National Project. Dr. Ali is a formally trained physical chemist but his interest in free radical biology and medicine started in 2003 while exploring the extraordinary antioxidant properties of fullerenes in vitro and in vivo. The elegance and complexity of the mitochondrion, the tiny powerhouse within our cells that was once a free-living bacterium, fascinated Ali so much that he made a career shift to study the critical roles of mitochondria in aging and diseases. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are high-energy short-lived molecules that play increasingly recognizable physiologic as well as pathologic roles in biological systems. The transient nature of these species makes their detection a challenging task. However, Ali’s physical chemistry background allowed him to develop magnetic resonance, spectroscopic, and electrochemical techniques in combination with conventional biochemical methods to study ROS dynamics in multiple organ tissues and cellular domains. During his work as an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine in the University of California San Diego the period from 2005-2012, Ali contributed to many projects in the field of mitochondria function and free radical biology and medicine. His work produced over 40 of highly cited articles in high-impact journals including Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Aging Cells, Antioxidant and Redox Signaling, FASEB J, J Neurosciences, Free Radical Biology and Medicine, etc. He acts as an Executive Editor for the Journal of Nanomedicine and Biotherapeutic Discovery, an Associate Editor for BMC Research Notes, Editor for BMC Biology, and Editor for the Journal of Analytical Sciences, Methods, and Instrumentation.