Radwa Hanafy is an ORISE post-doctoral research fellow at the National Center for Toxicological Research (NCTR) of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), where she investigates the effects of xenobiotics on the gut microbiome.

Radwa received her bachelor’s degree in Microbiology and Chemistry in her home country of Egypt. After graduating, she worked as a Medical Lab Technologist in a governmental hospital before moving on to study for her PhD in 2015. Radwa studied for her PhD at the Department of Microbiology & Molecular Genetics at Oklahoma State University under the supervision of Prof. Noha Youssef.

Radwa’s PhD focused on understanding factors affecting the diversity and community structures of anaerobic fungi (AF) in different herbivorous guts using culture-based and culture-independent approaches. Also, she is an expert in the isolation and characterization of anaerobic fungi.

As a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Prof. Kevin Solomon (Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Delaware), she further worked on developing robust genetic tools for AF to understand their role in the herbivorous gut. This toolset provides a framework for engineering AF for applications in sustainability and bioproduction.

Radwa’s culturing efforts have yielded more than 200 different AGF isolates that broadly capture both inter- and intra-genus level diversity. Also, these isolates have reshaped current understanding of anaerobic fungal taxonomy and have led to the discovery of eleven novel genera (Pecoramyces,  Feramyces, Agriosomyces, Aklioshbomyces, Capellomyces, Ghazallomyces, Joblinomyces, Tahromyces, Khoyollomyces, Aestipascuomyces and Paucimyces).

You can find out more about Radwa’s research via her Research Gate page and by following her on X.