Postdoctoral Fellows
Postdoctoral Fellow
Eslam received his PhD from the University of Essex, UK, under the supervision of Prof. David Smith and Dr. David Suggett. During his PhD, his research focused on corals in extreme environments to describe corals' susceptibility to thermal stress along the Red Sea. He identified genetic variants of endosymbiotic zooxanthellae and the associated microbial community that may describe the tolerance of corals to extreme thermal anomalies along the Red Sea. During his postdoc at Penn State University, USA, with Prof. Iliana Baums, he investigated the acclimation mechanisms of corals living near methane seeps in the Gulf of Mexico using integrated genomic and ecological approaches.
Recently, Eslam was awarded an exploration grant from the National Geographic Society to assess the thermal threshold of corals along the latitudinal gradient of the Red Sea. He will explore coral reefs in Jordon, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia to characterize the physiological signature of "super corals" in the Red Sea to understand their acclimation mechanism(s). He is also interested to identify the functional role of the microbial community associated corals and how they facilitate corals' survival in extreme environmental conditions.
Biological and Environmental Science and Engineering Division (BESE)