Najib M. El-Sayed

Najib M. El-Sayed is a Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, and Director of the Integrated Life Sciences Honors Program. His research focuses on host-pathogen interactions using genomic approaches, particularly in parasitism and bacterial infections. He teaches courses including Bioinformatics and Genomics (BISI620) and Programming for Biology (BISI622). His work combines molecular, computational, and phylogenetic tools to advance understanding of infection mechanisms, aiming to improve diagnostics and treatments for diseases caused by parasites and bacteria.

El-Sayed holds a Ph.D. from Yale University School of Medicine (1993). His research group investigates the biology of Leishmania, Trypanosoma, and Streptococcus species, emphasizing genomic and transcriptomic analyses of host-pathogen interactions. Key areas include immune responses to infections, drug resistance mechanisms, and pathogen survival strategies. Recent work highlights molecular signatures predicting treatment outcomes in cutaneous leishmaniasis and computational tools like da_Tracker for tracking infected cells.

El-Sayed’s laboratory collaborates with interdisciplinary teams to address global health challenges through genomics. His graduate affiliations include the Computational Biology, Bioinformatics & Genomics (CBBG) and Molecular & Cellular Biology (MOCB) programs at UMD. He has published extensively on topics ranging from antimonial resistance mechanisms to the role of metallothioneins in Leishmania survival.