Khadija has graduated from the School of Pharmacy, Tripoli University, Libya. She worked as a pharmacist at the National Center for Infertility Treatment in Tripoli Libya before being accepted at Ghent University, Belgium in the master’s program at the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences. Her work was sponsored by many companies and agencies in the laboratory of Pharmaceutical Microbiology. She was able to validate the efficacy of antimicrobial coatings on stainless steel surfaces which showed a very promising inhibition of bacterial growth on those stainless-steel surfaces. Khadija also estimated the risk of microbial contamination during the use of medical devices such as intravenous infusion bags and cytostatic drug delivery devices. The main technique that her lab used in the detection of microorganisms was Solid Phase Cytometry SPC which combines both flow cytometry and epifluorescence microscopy. Her work was one of the first examples of using Solid phase cytometry for microbial validation of medical devices. Khadija and her team’s work was sponsored by Macopharma. S.A.S. France company, and the university hospital (Universitair Ziekenhuis UZ, Ghent, Belgium) and her results were presented to the nurses and the medical staff at the hospital to highlight the importance of sterilization and working with aseptic techniques with patients at hospitals. Khadija also got another master’s in microbiology & molecular Genetics from Oklahoma State University, USA. She worked with azoreductase enzyme in Clostridium perfringens, which is an intestinal microbe and potential pathogen causing gangrene infections and foodborne illnesses. Those bacteria are suspected of having multiple genes that encode for different types of azoreductases. Khadija was able to isolate and characterize one new gene and its encoded protein. Khadija gained during her two master’s a wide range of knowledge and experience in pharmaceutical sciences, microbiology, and Molecular genetics and she aims to use her experience in Dr. Michniak’s lab in the field of dermaceutics.
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- PhD Student