Yousif Almehza

At Johns Hopkins, Yousif Almehza serves as a lecturer in the MS in Biotechnology program where he draws on his passion about neurodegenerative diseases and vision research and his experience with in vitro neuronal models and gene therapies. He is a researcher at the Kennedy Krieger Institute’s Moser Center for Leukodystrophies, a center dedicated to the mechanistic and therapeutic research of diseases of the white matter, specifically adrenoleukodystrophy and the ultra-rare LBSL.

Almehza received his BS at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom, where he specialized in disease research and human physiology. There, he defended his thesis on a metanalysis of stroke preclinical trials, investigating the failed attempts at bringing stroke interventions from animal models into human patients. He then briefly worked in the Molecular Medicine department at the Arabian Gulf University in his home country of Bahrain, further training in laboratory methods and researching murine and human derived organoids, with a particular focus on breast cancer cell models. Almehza completed his master’s in biotechnology at Johns Hopkins University and joined a research lab investigating the genetic causes of myopia in mouse models.