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Contact information


mootaz.salman@dpag.ox.ac.uk


01865 282656

Social media

Research groups

Institutes

Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery

Collaborators

Mootaz Salman

BPharm, MSc, PhD

Group Leader and MRC Career Development Fellow

  • Group Leader at the UK Dementia Research Institute (UK DRI)
  • Principal Investigator at Oxford BHF Centre of Research Excellence (CRE)
  • Group Leader at Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery
  • MRC Career Development Fellow
  • Departmental Research Lecturer
  • Research Fellow at Wolfson College
  • Elected Governing Body Fellow at Wolfson College

Positions of Responsibility

  • Convener of the Head of the Department (DPAG) Seminar Series.
  • Senior Doctoral Training Advisor (SDTA)
  • Member of the DPAG Outreach and Public Engagement Working Group.
  • Founding member of the aquaporin sub-committee, IUPHAR/Guide to Pharmacology. British Pharmacological Society

Research Interests

Dr Mootaz Salman is a Group Leader in Cellular Neuroscience and an MRC Career Development Fellow at the University of Oxford. He is a Principal Investigator at the British Heart Foundation (BHF) Centre for Research Excellence, the UK Dementia Research Institute (UK DRI) BHF Centre for Vascular Dementia Research (CVDR), and the Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery. He also holds a Research Fellowship at Wolfson College, Oxford.

His work involves investigating mechanisms of blood-brain barrier (dys)function in traumatic CNS injuries and neurodegenerative diseases using patient-derived stem cells, gene editing (CRISPR-Cas 9), advanced imaging and organ-on-a-chip technologies.


Biography

After graduating with a Bachelor of Pharmacy with Honours (BPharm(Hons)) from the University of Mosul, he studied for Masters and Doctoral degrees at Sheffield Hallam University, investigating the mechanisms of brain water transport where he discovered a novel pharmacological framework for developing drugs to treat traumatic brain injuries and stroke.

He held my postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital where he spent 3 years. During this time, he developed 3D in vitro models to investigate mechanisms involved in improving the effectiveness of therapeutic antibodies for Alzheimer’s disease in collaboration with Biogen.

He moved to Oxford and joined DPAG in late 2020, working on CRISPR/Cas9 genome engineering of human iPSC-derived neurons from Parkinson’s patients to investigate molecular disease mechanisms in collaboration with GSK. In 2021, he was awarded the Leverhulme Research Fellowship that enabled him to start his independent work and he became a Departmental Research Lecturer.

In 2023, he launched his research group at DPAG and the Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery, primarily funded through his MRC Career Development Fellowship and supported by additional grants from the British Heart Foundation (BHF), BBSRC Pioneer Award, CONNECT–Horizon 2020, and the Chief Scientist Office. In 2025, he joined the UK Dementia Research Institute (UK DRI), with continued support from the BHF to advance translational neurovascular research.

His group investigates mechanisms of blood-brain barrier (dys)function in neurodegenerative diseases and brain injuries, using patient-derived stem cells. They design and build innovative dynamic 3D multicellular in vitro models including organ-on-a-chip and organoids to accurately recapitulate the brain and blood-brain barrier function under mechanobiological stimuli, neuroinflammation and other neurodegenerative-relevant conditions.

Dr Salman was awarded multiple accolades including the International Society of Neurochemistry (ISN) Young Neuroscientist Lectureship Award in 2022, the Society for Experimental Biology (SEB) 2024 President’s Medal for the Cell Biology Section, Alzheimer’s Research UK (ARUK) David Hague Early Career Investigator of the Year in 2024, the Inaugural ALBA-Roche Research Prize for Excellence in Neuroscience 2024, and the Bayliss-Starling Prize Lecture 2025 by the Physiological Society.


Team

Current:

We are looking for motivated Post-doctoral Scientists, Research Assistants and students who are interested in combining state-of-the-art organ-on-chip technology and patient-derived stem cells to join our group and investigate molecular mechanisms of neurodegenerative diseases and brain injuries.

Previous members:

  • Ms Rachel Walsh (FHS student). Currently, she is continuning her MD degree at the University of Oxford.
  • Dr Kalina Naidoo (Postdoctoral Research Scientist). Currently, she is doing her second post-doctoral training with Prof. Richard Wade-Martins and Dr Brent Ryan at DPAG, University of Oxford.
  • Ms Elly Robles (Visiting Graduate from Tecnologico de Monterrey in Mexico). Currently, she is a DPhil student at DPAG, University of Oxford.
  • Dr Ewa Grassin (Visiting Postdoctoral Scientist from University of Geneva). Currently, she is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital in the US.
  • Ms Elba Molpeceres Sierra (MSc student from University of Bordeaux). Currently, she is pursuing her PhD at Bordeaux Neurocampus in France.

Key publications

Recent publications

More publications