Dr. Barakat received his PhD in biophysics from the University of Alberta in 2012. He then joined Professor Michael Houghton’s Lab at UofA as a postdoctoral fellow in 2012. In 2014, he got his first academic appointment as a Research Assistant Professor at the school of Pharmacy at UofA. Dr. Barakat’s research stands at the multidisciplinary interface of physics, biology and computer science. His major focus is on developing and applying state-of-the-art computational drug discovery tolls to discover new antiviral and immunotherapeutic small molecule drugs. Throughout his research career, Dr. Barakat has made great contributions in understanding the nature and biophysical processes underlying protein-drug interaction, protein-protein interactions, protein-DNA interactions, drug off-target interactions and predicting drug-mediated toxicity. He has recently discovered novel small molecule inhibitors for various targets including the HCV polymerase and the NS5A protein. His lab also designed small molecule inhibitors for the PD-1 immune checkpoint pathway. During his career, he received numerous awards including the CIHR and AIHS postdoctoral fellowships, the prestigious UofA dissertation award, the ACRI Studentship and many distinction awards throughout his undergraduate and graduate studies. Dr. Barakat is also the editor of a number of journals including the journal of Pharmaceutical Care & Health Systems, Austin Journal of Drug Discovery, Development and Delivery and the Journal of MOJ Bioequivalence & Bioavailability. He also serves as a guest reviewer for the journals of PLOS ONE, BMC Clinical Pathology and Molecular Modeling.

Rational drug design - computational modelling - immunotherapy - Cancer research.