She studied in Sfax, Tunisia, received her clinical training in Munich and is now a professor of molecular medicine and pathology at the German University in Cairo: Nabila Hamdi is this year's recipient of the Hans Kupczyk Visiting Professorship at Ulm University. Hamdi is conducting research on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which has been little studied in Egypt to date, and is currently setting up the first ALS registry on the African continent.
Sometimes history repeats itself: in the USA, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) was relatively unknown until the well-known baseball player Lou Gehrig was diagnosed with this incurable, degenerative disease of the motor nervous system in the 1930s and had to end his career. And in Egypt, too, hardly anyone knew about ALS until professional footballer Moamen Zakaria developed the disease in 2020. These parallels were highlighted by Professor Nabila Hamdi on Monday 8 July in her well-attended lecture "Connecting the Neural Dots: German-Egyptian Cross-Cultural Journey Through Neuromuscular Research", which she gave on the occasion of being awarded the Hans Kupczyk Visiting Professorship at the University of Ulm.
Hamdi is a professor of molecular medicine and pathology at the German University in Cairo (GUC). Her ALS research has shown that the local Egyptian phenotype differs greatly from that of the German population. The physician is currently setting up a population-based ALS registry in Egypt – the first of its kind in Africa. Professor Nabila Hamdi has played a key role in establishing an international research cluster on neuromuscular diseases; she is also driving forward clinical trials on gene therapies in order to apply research results to specific treatments for patients in Egypt and worldwide. "You have to think globally to better understand the disease," Hamdi is convinced.
University President Professor Michael Weber awarded Hamdi the Hans Kupczyk Visiting Professorship in the Senate Chamber of the university. The laudatory speeches were given by Professor Reiner Siebert, a human geneticist, and Professor Albert Ludolph, a neurologist, who are hosting the visiting professorship this year. Siebert praised Nabila Hamdi's international, intercultural and interdisciplinary approach at the interface between neurology and human genetics. Ludolph, who has been working with the GUC for many years, was impressed by her courage, curiosity, flexibility and social intelligence: "We are a good team thanks to her social skills."
About the Hans Kupczyk Visiting Professorship
The Hans Kupczyk Foundation at Ulm University promotes science, education and training. The foundation was established in 1985 by the university's honorary senator, Hans Kupczyk. Its funds are used to finance visiting professorships, which are awarded annually and enable international researchers to spend several weeks at Ulm University. The aim is to give students, doctoral candidates and all academic staff the opportunity to get to know the guest's expertise and to use it for their own academic development.
About the GUC
The German University in Cairo was founded in 2002 in cooperation with the universities of Ulm and Stuttgart. The independent, non-profit Egyptian private university is run with the vision of building a leading centre of excellence in teaching and research that promotes scientific, technical, economic and cultural cooperation between Egypt and Germany.
Text and media contact: Christine Liebhardt