Name: Kawtar Ben Larbi
Position: Master Student, 2022
Biographical information
I graduated with a BSc in Animal Biotechnology from the University Abdelmalek Essaâdi (UAE) in Tangier, Morocco, in 2020, and I am now enrolled in the Molecular Biotechnology master’s program at the University of Barcelona (UB). For my bachelor degree project, I worked on parasitic infections, specifically the pathology and epidemiology of cutaneous and visceral Leishmaniasis in Morocco. I focused on a variety of topics, including disease pathology, clinical data analysis, and the evaluation of cost-effective prevention methods based on sandfly vector eradication. I also completed several trainings and internships in a clinical microbiology laboratory, where I worked on various aspects of clinical diagnosis, such as the isolation and identification of STD causing bacteria. Since spring 2022, I have been working on my master thesis project at the IBMB-CSIC with the goal to replace the surface exposed domains of a structural flagellin with a proteolytic domain to create an E. coli strain with flagellum-embedded enzymatic capability.