Dr Mohammed is a PhD and MRes graduate from the University of Cambridge, and MSc graduate from UCL. He is specialized in bio-tech, med-tech, and DNA-nanotech. His latest research focused on building cutting-edge biosensors for pathogen diagnostics and single-molecule analysis through the utilization of solid-state nanopore sensing and DNA nanotechnology. One of his research projects is developing the fastest blood test for sepsis. Sepsis, also known as blood poisoning, is a life-threatening disease that causes 20% of global deaths. The main problem in diagnosing sepsis is the relatively slow traditional diagnostic methods that mainly rely on cell-culture which takes days to get appropriate diagnostics and in sepsis rapid diagnosis is of urgent need because the probability of death can increase by 8% every hour if the appropriate treatment isn’t given. Mohammed’s research developed the proof of concept data to show the potential of the technology to identify the microorganism causing sepsis, and his work is now being continued in a spin-out startup that he co-founded, called Cambridge Nucleomics, that is working now on improving that technology to develop the fastest sepsis test to diagnose sepsis in an hour to save lives. His efforts have earned him many awards and recognitions, including recognition as one of the top 21 innovators to watch in Cambridge and East England, and he also was selected as the first male student for the prestigious Rawabi Holding Award, selected from 14,000 students. Alongside his research, Mohammed works on a global initiative that he founded in 2021 - called ReachSci. Through this initiative, he has delivered 19 research and innovation programmes in +50 countries and established collaborations with more than 200 professors in 92 countries to scale the impact. Under his leadership, ReachSci inspired hundreds of aspiring innovators and researchers and supported the creation of 25+ startups, resulted in 50+ publications, and delivered 15+ locally impactful projects. The initiative received several grants and awards, including the “Diversity Fund” grant from the University of Cambridge, and it was nominated for the Vice-Chancellor’s Global Impact Award at the University of Cambridge. He also recently co-founded a non-profit organization in Saudi Arabia called Rwas to empower Saudis, in the fields of Science, Technology, and Engineering, to become innovators and entrepreneurs. Rwas was recently awarded the equivalent of ~$120,000 as one of the top 12 out of +520 impact initiatives at the Misk Initiatives Incubator.

Alawami is combining Nanopore sensing with DNA nanotechnology to analyse biomolecules at the single-molecule level to provide new biological insight that is not possible otherwise. His technology offers a cutting-edge solution that offers unprecedented single-molecule resolution for the analysis of DNA and RNA molecules where we can directly analyse them without the use of labels, amplification, or reverse transcription. Alawami's work focuses primarily on developing the technology for RNA drugs and vaccines pharmacometricians and pharmacodynamics, and direct RNA quantification of biomarkers.