Omar El-Halfawy, Ph.D.
University of Regina
Omar El-Halfawy, Ph.D., is a Canada Research Chair in chemogenomics and antimicrobial research and assistant professor in Biochemistry at the University of Regina. His research group works towards uncovering novel antibiotic resistance and microbial virulence mechanisms. It is the aim to discover new antimicrobial solutions using an interdisciplinary approach that encompasses microbiology, biochemistry, molecular and chemical biology and chemogenomics.
El-Halfawy received his B.S. in pharmaceutical sciences and M.S. in pharmaceutical microbiology from Alexandria University, Egypt, in 2005 and 2009, respectively. He also worked as a community pharmacist in Egypt. In 2010, he moved to Canada and completed his Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology at Dr. Miguel Valvano’s lab at the University of Western Ontario in 2014, focusing on mechanisms of intrinsic antibiotic resistance mediated by metabolites and other bacterial small molecules. El-Halfawy then completed a postdoctoral fellowship from 2015-2020 at Dr. Eric Brown’s lab at McMaster University, where he explored novel solutions to target multi-drug resistant bacteria.
El-Halfawy received his B.S. in pharmaceutical sciences and M.S. in pharmaceutical microbiology from Alexandria University, Egypt, in 2005 and 2009, respectively. He also worked as a community pharmacist in Egypt. In 2010, he moved to Canada and completed his Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology at Dr. Miguel Valvano’s lab at the University of Western Ontario in 2014, focusing on mechanisms of intrinsic antibiotic resistance mediated by metabolites and other bacterial small molecules. El-Halfawy then completed a postdoctoral fellowship from 2015-2020 at Dr. Eric Brown’s lab at McMaster University, where he explored novel solutions to target multi-drug resistant bacteria.