JEDDAH: Dr. Malak Abed Al-Thagafi is a renowned Saudi scientist with expertise in diverse medical domains including anatomical and clinical pathology, molecular genetics pathology, neuropathology, surgical pathology and hematopathology.

She is a medical director at King Faisal Specialist Hospital International Holding Company and has been chair of the Genomics Research Department at King Fahd Medical City (KFMC) in Riyadh since 2017. 

Previously, she worked for four years as a consultant in molecular genetics and neuropathology at KFMC until September 2018. 

Moreover, Malak Abed Al-Thagafi has been an assistant research professor at King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology in Riyadh since February 2016. 

She earned several fellowships at the University of California, San Francisco, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School. She has also written and published various reference papers in leading scientific journals. She was appointed lecturer at Harvard University’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. However, in 2014 Abedalthagafi decided to return to Saudi Arabia upon the announcement of the Saudi Genome Project. 

She graduated from King Abdul Aziz University and then pursued her postgraduate studies at Harvard, Georgetown, and Stanford Universities. She is specialized in neurology, anatomy, clinical and molecular genetics. 

She also obtained a master’s degree in business and medical management from Johns Hopkins University in 2010.   She was chosen by The Pathologist magazine for its list of the 100 most powerful advocates of pathology.