Dr. Areej Abuhammad, Assistant Professor at the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences of the School of Pharmacy, has been announced as one of the winners of the 2017 UNESCO- L’Oréal Levant & Egypt Fellowships for Women in Science.

 

Abuhammad has been awarded the fellowship for her research on the development of drugs for the chronic venous disease based on the study of the three-dimensional structure of proteins.

 

"The L’Oréal-UNESCO “For Women in Science will help me to design new drugs for the chronic venous disease," Abuhammad told UJ News".

 

"The disease is very common especially among women and can cause significant morbidity in a variety of clinical conditions, including venous hypertension, varicose veins, and venous ulcers," she added.

 

The L’Oréal-UNESCO “For Women in Science” Levant and Egypt program honors and empowers Arab female scientists from Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Iraq, Syria, and Egypt, whose findings have contributed to the advancement of scientific knowledge and helped change the world for the better. This year’s competition was outstanding with a big percentage of highly qualified applicants.

 

This Program identifies and rewards talented young female scientists in the field of Life Sciences (such as biology, biochemistry, biophysics, genetics, physiology, neurosciences, biotechnologies, ecology and ethology) as well as Physical Sciences (such as physics, chemistry, petroleum engineering, mathematics, engineering sciences, information sciences, Earth and Universe sciences).

 

The Program honors five talented young Arab women researchers for the quality of their research works and encourages them to pursue a brilliant career in science in the Levant Countries and Egypt.

 

Abuhammad studied Pharmacy at UJ and received the Abdel-Rahim Jardaneh Award for Academic Excellence in Pharmacy. In 2008, she was awarded a full scholarship to obtain a PhD in Pharmacology at the University of Oxford.

Abuhammad joined UJ's School of Pharmacy in 2013. Since then, she has been working on developing structural biology and protein crystallography in Jordan. Abuhammad received a substantial research funding from national and international bodies to carry out the first protein crystallisation experiments in Jordan.