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Wael Mamdouh

Brief Biography

Wael Mamdouh is a professor of nanotechnology at the Department of Chemistry at The American University in Cairo (AUC). Mamdouh is also the leader of one of the largest dynamic research groups at AUC, biomedical polymer nano-composites, hydrogels and tissue engineering.

Mamdouh is the also the founder of a recent Spinoff Company (NANO-Fib-TECH) for producing innovative nanotechnology-based antibacterial and disinfectant nanofibers liquids for healthcare industry from the lab to the market. The project led to this startup was funded by the Academy of Scientific Research and Technology (ASRT) in Egypt and incubated in collaboration with Bedaya Center for Entrepreneurship and SMEs Development (GAFI), Ministry of Investments in Egypt for nine months in 2016.

Recently, Mamdouh won the first place prize among 200 participants for the best startup in the third Cairo International Exhibition of Innovation (Cairo Innovates 2016), organized by ASRT in Egypt.

Mamdouh supervised many students with different backgrounds (chemistry, biology, biotechnology, pharmacy, mechanical engineering and dentistry) in different programs (chemistry, biotechnology, nanotechnology, applied sciences, dentistry, and pharmacy) in AUC as well as in collaboration with national universities (Ain Shams and Cairo Universities) and international universities (University Putra Malaysia (UPM) and the Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Center (iNANO), Denmark.

More than 18 students (undergraduate, MSc and PhD) graduated under Mamdouh’s supervision since 2014, which is one of the highest records. Many of those students further developed their careers abroad (PhD studies) in USA, UK, Switzerland, Germany and France.

Mamdouh has very strong teaching record at prestigious European, Asian and Egyptian Universities. The courses he taught range from general chemistry courses to advanced courses and presented lectures in nanoscience and nanotechnology at AUC.

In 2005, he joined the Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Center (iNANO) at Aarhus University in Denmark as assistant professor where he was in charge of one of the highly equipped state-of-the-art nanoscience and nanotechnology laboratories, the scanning probe microscope (STM and AFM)) activities under ambient conditions. In 2009, he joined the Department of Chemistry at AUC as adjunct assistant professor. In 2011, Mamdouh was hired as a full time tenure-track assistant professor at AUC until 2017 where he became associate professor (tenured).

Mamdouh has also been appointed as guest professor since 2008 at two prestigious universities in China; Tianjin University (TU), Tianjin, and Henan University, Kaifeng. In 2011, he became a tenure-track assistant professor of nanotechnology at AUC.

Research Interest

For about 20 years, Mamdouh has built up significant research experience in the field of nanoscience and nanotechnology where he was engaged in performing state-of-the-art nanoscience and nanotechnology research in a multidisciplinary research environment across many scientific fields such as chemistry, physics, biology, material science, and surface science. 

Mamdouh used in his research a wide variety of nanomaterials ranging from core-shell silver nanoparticles, nanofibers, DNA/RNA nucleobase molecules, modified nucleobases, peptide nucleic acids, locked nucleic acids, amino acids, carbon nanotubes, enzymes, proteins, chromosomes, and DNA origami. 

Mamdouh’s research work is divided into four main parts:

Designing novel nanomaterials and nanocomposites - electrospun nanofibers and conjugated nanoparticles - for biomedical, industrial and packaging applications using natural and synthetic polymers, herbal extracts and essential oils.

Investigating different biomedical activities (such as antibacterial, drug delivery, antioxidant, and cell proliferation) of the developed nanomaterials

Applications of the prepared nanomaterials in:

  • Drug delivery (for cancers like breast and lung) and neurodegenerative diseases (Alzehimer)
  • Antibacterial and antifungal nano-coatings
  • Nanofibers scaffolds for wound dressings
  • Nanofibers scaffolds for tissue engineering (including bone, cartridge, tissue and skin regeneration), and Nanodentistry
  • Nanofibers scaffolds for Nano-cosmetics,
  • Nanoporous membranes for biomedical, industrial and packaging applications.
  • Converting food waste into useful nanomaterials in different forms (nanofibers and nanoparticles), with enhanced biomedical applications

Instruments development: Mamdouh is interested in building scientific instruments such as electro-spinning techniques which are cost-effective, reliable, robust and user friendly, in addition to biomedical kits.

Mamdouh’s h-index is 20, with i10-index of 26 and published around 40 papers in international peer-reviewed journals such as Nature, Nature Nanotechnology, Scientific Reports, International Journal of Pharmaceutics, ACS NANO, Journal of the American Chemical Society, Journal of Physical Chemistry and many more, in addition to two book reviews and conference proceedings and his publications received more than 2800 citations worldwide.

Mamdouh’s work has been presented at many different universities and specialized conferences where he has been invited to lecture and chair sessions at many national, international conferences, workshops and universities in Europe, China, United States and Egypt.

Patents

Mamdouh has a number of published US patents related to Nanoparticle-based Combinatorial Therapy for Breast Cancer Therapy, Inulin Nanofibers for Antibacterial and Prebiotic applications and polysaccharides composite soluble Nanofibers for anti-bacterial applications.

Research Funding

Mamdouh has successfully received a number of external research grants applications which he has applied for during the past years (nine million Euros) in addition to internal AUC grants and ASRT grants. He has also been engaged in establishing two international centers of excellence:

  • The Centre for DNA Nanotechnology at the iNANO Center with a budget of 40 million DKK (~5,270,000 Euro) in collaboration with iNANO, Arizona State University and Duke University, United States
  • The Sino-Danish Research Center for Molecular Nano structures on Surfaces in collaboration with iNANO, the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology (NCNST) (Beijing, China) and Universities of Beijing and Tsinghua in China
  • MSc and PhD in Chemistry from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KUL) in Belgium in 2002 and 2005,
  • BSc degree in Science, Chemistry from Ain Shams University, Egypt in 1997.
  • Nominated to be a member in Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Advances Reviewer Panel (London, UK)
  • Reviewer of many international peer reviewed journals such as RSC Advances, Nature, Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing group), Current Opinion in Colloid and Interface Science, ISRN Nanotechnology journals, Environmental Progress and Sustainable Energy, Polymer Composites, Science PG, Ultramicroscopy, and Colloids and Surfaces, Journal of Applied Polymer Sciences, and Material Sciences and Engineering.
  • MIT Briefs (Arabic Edition)
  • AUC News
  • Nile Education TV
  • Nile News TV
  • Nile TV
  • Qatar TV
  • Al-Ahram Newspaper
  • Radio station (North Upper Egypt)
  • Suez Canal University TV
  • CBC extra
  • The Egyptian national TV channel (1)