Maher Elsheikh

Fremont, CA ***** ad3rdt@r.postjobfree.com 530-***-****

Lab Manager/Senior Scientist

Accomplished professional with extensive experience spearheading multimillion-dollar projects from inception to completion and ensuring prompt delivery of products to customers in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment. Exceptional leadership, analytical, and organizational skills with ability to foster productive relationships with key stakeholders. Demonstrated history of developing and validating new scientific protocols and technologies.

EDUCATION

PhD in Medical Microbiology and Immunology with a Designated Emphasis on Biotechnology

Medical Microbiology and Immunology Department 2018

University of California Davis

Dissertation Title: HIV Cure Through Eradication of Viral Reservoirs.

Master of Science in Biological Sciences with emphasis on Microbiology 2003

California State University East Bay

Thesis Title: Isolation and Identification of Cellulolytic Bacteria from Environmental Sources

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Lab Manager/Sr. Scientist, 06/2023-present

Stanford University, Department of Medicine - Stanford, CA

Manage and supervise a group of 25 medical doctors, post doctoral professional, graduate and undergraduate students.

Key Contributions:

• Support the activities of the Lab principal investigator/vice-chair and provide leadership coverage when PI is not present.

• Organize and coordinate daily operations of the laboratory; provide direct oversight of the laboratory procedures and execute laboratory responsibilities and standardization.

• Facilitate audits, safety inspections and attend leader meetings.

• Lead and support solutions for complex problems based on facts, observations, experiences, and judgments.

• Ensure all requirements of applicable regulatory agencies (federal, state, local) are always met and satisfied and certifications are current and lab equipment always maintained.

• Keep all documents and reports of daily activities.

• Work with lab leadership to develop and implement annual operations and ensure goals are met.

• Ensure that the laboratory is adequately staffed and managed. Recruit, interview, and select lab personnel and team members as needed.

Microbiology Lab Manager, 11/2022-3/2023

Prime Analytical Laboratory - Concord, CA

Managed, supervised and trained five technicians to perform microbiological and other laboratory tasks in this start-up company.

Key Contributions:

Organized and equipped the lab including hiring competent team members. Established protocols and operating procedures. Analyzed product materials and routings processes for cost development. Prepared the lab to pass the ISO inspection and become GMP certified. Concluded many overdue projects and increased revenues. vendor management, team development and management

Project Lead/Scientist/Virologist, 5/2021-10/2022

Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics – Berkeley, CA

Lead a project to develop an innovative analysis to determine virus titer from patient samples to replace plaque assay methods.

Key Contributions:

Lead a team of scientists to develop an exciting new technology using xCELLigence platform to develop a user-friendly technique to determine viral titer from patients volunteered to be treated with gene therapy methods. Developed project plans, timelines, reports and issue tracking with a combination of MS Project Professional. Managing project timelines and project budgets deploying.

Biomedical Research Scientist/Lab supervisor, 12/2005 to 9/2021

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory – Livermore, CA

Lead MM$ projects from inception to completion and ensured prompt delivery of products to customers.

Oversaw activities of technicians, technologists, and other scientists to ensure smooth flow of laboratory operations. Delivered training to interns on lab techniques as well as utilized trainees to accomplish various lab tasks that augments productivity of the organization, while achieving organizational goals and objectives through production of high-quality data.

Key Contributions:

Led a team of five scientists to carry out various tasks for successful accomplishment of DARPA funded project. Performed growth and titration of dengue viruses in cell culture, antiviral assays and microscopy in addition to RNA extractions, amplifications, and sequencing.

Spearheaded $15M project for generating an assay to detect viruses.

Took part in MM$ dollar project aimed at protecting country from bioterrorism.

Characterized regulations of 84 genes involved in the disease-causing pathways within the human innate immune response upon infection with fastidious BSL3 organisms utilizing RT2 Profiler PCR panel.

Formulated safe transport system for fastidious pathogens. Transported pathogens from field locations to laboratories (at room temperature) by leveraging environmental Acanthamoeba Castellanii.

Utilized BSL3 Francisella tularensis strains for characterizing innate immune response of human dendritic cells to infection.

Discovered 15 miRNAs responsible for filovirus infection in monkeys by performing various tasks, such as nucleic acid quantitation, expression profiling of ~900 mRNAs/miRNA (microRNAs) on Nanostring nCounter, and laboratory protocols development for both systems.

Nurtured viruses of both medical and veterinary importance through plaque forming units and tissue culture doses (TCID50) as well as delivered quantitated virus stocks and nucleic acids to researchers at LLNL.

Leveraged real time PCR to screen signatures in Taqman format against diverse environmental backgrounds in multiple matrixes/target templates.

Characterized bacterial pathogens, such as virulent strains of Yersinia pestis and Bacillus anthracis, as well as host response to these pathogens by running proteomics assays.

Microbiologist II, 9/2001 to 12/2005

Viral & Rickettsial Disease Laboratory, Richmond, CA

Isolated and tracked human viruses in cell culture by leveraging variety of methods, including quantification, neutralization, EIA, ELISA, hemagglutination, hemagglutination inhibition, immunofluorescence, and PCR assays.

Worked on various research projects, such as rhinovirus asthma study, microarray, and vaccinia project in close collaborations with UCSF and LLNL. Conducted research to gather data for publications/posters.

Key Contributions:

Validated efficiency of new rabies testing procedure in close coordination with CDC.

Delivered exceptional guidance/training to public health microbiologists on rabies detection methods as well as enhanced skillset of trainee microbiologists on influenza identification assays.

Additional Experience as: Guest Researcher (Internship) at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researching and surveying influenza virus for vaccine determination.

AWARDS & ACHIEVEMENTS

2017: Best poster presenter for my poster titled “A Novel Strategy to Eliminate Latent HIV Reservoir”. Presented during the Microbe Host Interaction Tahoe Symposium

2013: LLNL Environmental Management System/Occupational Health & Safety Management System (EMS/OHSMS) Certificate of Appreciation in recognition of outstanding contribution to successful Surveillance Audit

2011: LLNL Bioscience & Biotechnology Division (BBTD) Spot Award for Safety Awareness & Diligence

2009: LLNL Mentor of the Year Award.

2008: LLNL Directorate Award in recognition of the work on TaqMan Assay Development

PUBLICATIONS

Sanjiv R. Shah, Staci R. Kane, Maher Elsheikh, and Teneile M. Alfarob. (2021). Development of a rapid viability RT-PCR (RV-RT-PCR) method to detect infectious SARS-CoV-2 from swabs. J Virol Methods. 2021 Nov; 297: 114251. doi: 10.1016/j.jviromet.2021.114251

Maher M. Elsheikh, Yuyang Tang, Dajiang Li, Guochun Jiang. (2019). Deep latency: A new insight into a functional HIV cure. EBioMedicine, The LANCET; Volume 45, July 2019, Pages 624-629. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ebiom.2019.06.020

Guochun Jiang, Emanual Maverakis, Michelle Y. Cheng, Maher M. Elsheikh, Claire Deleage, Gema Méndez-Lagares, Michiko Shimoda, Steven A. Yukl, Dennis J. Hartigan-O’Connor, George R. Thompson III, Jacob D. Estes, Joseph K. Wong, and Satya Dandekar. (2019). Disruption of latent HIV in vivo during the clearance of actinic keratosis by ingenol mebutate. JCI Insight. 2019;4(7): e126027. https://doi.org/10.1172/jci.insight.126027

Sangil Kim, Dietrich Dehlinger, José Peña, Hyang Seol, Maxim Shusteff, Nicole M. Collette, Maher Elsheikh, Matthew Davenport, Pejman Naraghi Arani, Elizabeth Wheeler. (2019). Virus concentration and purification by a microfluidic filtering system with an integrated PEGylated antifouling membrane. Microfluidics and Nanofluidics (2019) 23:9 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10404-018-2173-y

Guochun Jiang, Don Nguyen, Nancie M. Archin, Steven A. Yukl, Gema Méndez-Lagares, Yuyang Tang, Maher M. Elsheikh, George R. Thompson III, Dennis J. Hartigan-O’Connor, David M. Margolis, Joseph K. Wong, and Satya Dandekar. (2018). HIV latency is reversed by ACSS2-driven histone crotonylation. J Clin Invest. 2018;128(3):1190-1198. doi:10.1172/JCI98071.

José Peña, Haiyin Chen-Harris, Jonathan E. Allen, Mona Hwang, Maher Elsheikh, Shalini Mabery, Helle Bielefeldt-Ohmann, Adam T. Zemla, Richard A. Bowen, and Monica K. Borucki. (2016). Sendai virus intra-host population dynamics and host immunocompetence influence viral virulence during in vivo passage. Virus Evolution, 2(1), vew008. http://doi.org/10.1093/ve/vew008

Shea N. Gardner, Crystal J. Jaing, Maher M Elsheikh, José Peña, David A. Hysom, and Monica K. Borucki. (2014). Multiplex Degenerate Primer Design for Targeted Whole Genome Amplification of Many Viral Genomes, Advances in Bioinformatics, vol. 2014, Article ID 101894. doi:10.1155/2014/101894.

Dietrich Dehlinger, Lynn Suer, Maher Elsheikh, José Peña and Pejman Naraghi-Arani. (2013). Dye Free Automated Cell Counting and Analysis, Biotechnology and Bioengineering journal, doi:10.1002/bit.24757

Brett A Chromy, Maher Elsheikh, Tova L Christensen, Doug Livingston, Kyle Petersen, Jane P Bearinger, and Paul D Hoeprich. (August 2012). Repurposing screens identify rifamycins as potential broad-spectrum therapy for multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii and select agent microorganisms. Future Microbiology, Vol. 7, No. 8, Pages 1011-1020. (doi: 10.2217/fmb.12.75)

Hysom DA, Naraghi-Arani P, Elsheikh M, Carrillo AC, Williams PL, Gardner SN. (2012). Skip the Alignment: Degenerate, Multiplex Primer and Probe Design Using K-mer Matching Instead of Alignments. PLoS ONE 7(4): e34560. doi:10.1371/ journal. pone.0034560

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