Rabeah Adawiyah Abdul Razak

Rabeah completed her BSc in Industrial Biotechnology at Universiti Malaysia Pahang, Malaysia. During her undergraduate studies, a funded internship at the Regenerative Medicine Laboratory, Konkuk University, South Korea, under the supervision of Professor Lee Jeong Ik provided early exposure to regenerative medicine and translational research, with a focus on animal embryonic stem cells and osteoarthritis. This was followed by work at the Radcliffe Department of Medicine (RDM), NHS Blood and Transplant, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, where human umbilical cord-derived mesenchymal stem cells were studied in the context of kidney transplantation. Research in this period focused on the application of normothermic perfusion systems to assess and enhance graft viability, with particular attention to the immunomodulatory and regenerative properties of stem cells. An MSc in Taiwan further expanded this work, investigating the immunomodulatory and antiviral effects of mesenchymal stem cell-derived secretomes on feline panleukopenia virus (FPV), integrating stem cell biology with virology and host–pathogen interactions. Currently a DPhil student under the supervision of Professor Francis Szele and Professor Zoltan Molnar, the research focuses on neurodevelopmental inflammatory dysregulation in schizophrenia. Human cortical stem cells in both 2D cultures and cerebral organoid systems are used to investigate how inflammatory signalling influences early brain development. Support for this work is provided by the Merdeka Scholarship from Yayasan Khazanah in partnership with the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies.