Omar graduated with a BPharm. from University of Sharjah (UOS), UAE in late 2017. In early 2018, he joined Drug Design and Development group at Research Institute of Medical and Health Sciences (RIMHS) as a research assistant under the supervision of Dr. Mohammad El-Gamal till 2020 where he was involved in the design and the synthesis of small-molecules as antiproliferative agents targeting kinases.
Afterwards, he joined Division of Bio-Medical Science and Technology, KIST school in Seoul, Republic of Korea, under the supervision of Dr. Oh Chang Hyun, and was awarded his MSc. in biological chemistry in 2022. The emphasis of his work in KIST spanned the development of synthetic methodology of hits, leads, and drug candidates, as well as chemical synthesis of standards for possible metabolites of drug candidates. His MSc thesis was focused on the design and synthesis of imidazo[2-1,b]thiazole derivatives as antiproliferative agents. Omar later decided to re-join Dr. El-Gamal’s group at RIMHS as a research assistant, pursuing new projects in the development of new small-molecules.
Currently, he is pursuing his PhD at Saarland University and HIPS, Chemical Biology of Carbohydrates under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Titz, and will focus on the development of microarrays as diagnostic and early hit discovery tools for pandemic preparedness. His work involves designing and synthesizing novel sialomimetic agents targeting viral lectins as viral entry inhibitors.