I look at myself as the middleman between technology and the results. There are a lot of microscopy techniques and skills that require a long time to master. Not many PhD students, postdocs or other researchers have the time to learn and master every single technique required for a complex imaging experiment, so I do that. I am the expert in specific techniques and take care of parts of their experiments for them. Then I give them the results and they analyze it and get the data that they need.

Photo by Celia Muto

Can you tell us a bit about what your job entails on a day-to-day basis?
At the Neuroimaging Facility (NIF) at HMS, I am responsible for all wet lab work, starting with RNAscope. In this process, we perform staining to detect RNA in various types of tissues. Additionally, I am involved in tissue clearing techniques such as X-Clarity, iDISCO, and ECI. These techniques facilitate deep imaging of large tissue volumes using light microscopy approaches that are typically limited by light scattering in the tissue. Finally, I also handle array tomography, electron microscopy sectioning, and tissue preparation.

In addition to my work at NIF, I am pursuing my master’s degree in psychology at Harvard Extension School, and I have been working as a mental health counselor at Cambridge Health Alliance in their Child Psychiatric Unit. I have also been a mentor and co-leader for a local youth organization called ARKanum for the past 7 years. Our organization works with immigrant Muslim youth, supporting them in adjusting to cultural changes and the stressors that come with it.

When did you know that you wanted to be a scientist?
I’m not going to tell you that as a child, I was dreaming to be a researcher. That’s not true. I grew up in a refugee camp. I’d never seen a microscope in my life and had never been into a lab. I never had access to this field. When I came to the US in 2010, I had just finished high school and didn’t speak any English. I was interested in political science and psychology but these fields require language. I was always good at math, physics, and science, so I decided to study engineering because it doesn’t require much language.

I did my first two years at community college where I got a basic engineering associate degree, where I took all math, physics, and chemistry classes. Once my advisor saw my classes and my grades he told me about biomedical engineering and how it combines biology, medicine, and engineering. He said, “You understand the biology of things, you understand how it applies in medicine, and the engineering part is to link it to find new, innovative ways to provide solutions, invent technologies and stuff.” I thought this sounded fascinating and so I decided to study biomedical engineering. I concentrated in tissue engineering, because I wasn’t interested as much with machines and programming. Instead, I enjoyed working with cells, tissue, and experiments working in the lab. After graduation, I got my first job at MGH Mass Eye and Ear doing research in a lab. Then, I came here to HMS.

I dreamt of being a doctor when I was a kid and biomedical engineering, medicine, and research was close, so maybe that’s why also I was into it. I like being with people, helping people, working with people, and that’s what doctors do.

Can you tell us more about your upbringing and what it was like growing up in the refugee camp?
I’m a Palestinian refugee who was born and raised in a refugee camp in the south of Lebanon. My grandparents left Palestine because of the war and then they went to Lebanon and got married. Both my parents do not have a lot of formal education. My mom didn’t finish high school. My dad finished high school, but didn’t have further education. I come from a poor family who didn’t have a lot.

Lebanon is a very unstable country. There are wars all the time. I feel that for Palestinians, it’s worse because the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon are not under the government control. The Palestinian people have their mini country in the refugee camp with their own army and their own police. It’s very chaotic because there are so many political parties. People fight all the time and it’s very unsafe. Many times I was in class and a couple people were having a fight outside of school, and then within five minutes, this fight become a war. People arrived with guns and start shooting and killing people. We would run home with bullets flying on top of our heads and running home. This is common there. I’ll never forget out of all the big fights that happened one that lasted several days and got the whole camp shut down. When we returned to our classes, the walls were filled with bullets, the glass was destroyed, some of the classrooms were even burned from bombs. That was the situation, this is the camp. In 2005, there was a huge assassination for the prime minister. Since then, a lot of assassinations have happened. There was a war with Israel in 2006 that lasted 33 days. The whole country is in this action mode all the time.

That’s the first difference I noticed when I came here. I was like, “Nothing happens here? That’s it?” Because over there, I kid you not, a lot of days, we wake up to go to school and then hear, “Oh, there’s no school today, someone got shot.” Or someone get assassinated and we’re not going to school for a week.

And then I came here, and I was like, “Wow, every day is a peaceful day.”

What do you feel most passionately about?
I have a big passion for helping others and especially giving advice when they remind me of myself. I came to this country as a young man who didn’t know anything. When I look back I realize how much I would’ve loved if I had a mentor. My life would’ve been much easier. It’s very difficult to have to figure things on your own. Most people who grew up here, most likely, their parents went to school and could give you advice, your cousin, or another relative can give you advice. If not, if you speak English, you can even Google it.

For me, it was very different. It felt so lonely and scary. Because what are the options? You either succeed or you fail. Failing means what? We couldn’t just go back. There was a lot of pressure on me and my entire family. We had no choice but to succeed.

I feel like a big part of my current job at the Neuroimaging Facility is giving advice. People often don’t know how the equipment works. When I show them, they will often say how much I helped them and it feels good. That’s the most rewarding part for the job.

We are a small facility, but everyone knows us. It’s cool to feel like people can come to us all the time with questions and get help. That’s the same thing I feel in my community outside of work as well. I’m very socially active. Anytime I go to the mosque, all the people know me and sometimes will stop me in the streets and talk to me. I try my best to share what I’m learning in psychology from my work in the hospital or my degree and bring it to the community in a way connected to the religion. I hope it will help them figure out things in their life as it does for me.