I’m an Egyptian/American scientist. I spent my childhood in Houston, Texas, USA, and my teenage years in Cairo, Egypt. After completing my undergraduate degree in Applied and Engineering Physics at Cornell University, I briefly worked as a cold-atom experimental physicist. But ultimately, I couldn’t shake my desire to learn about gravity—which led me to do a PhD in string theory under Frederik Denef at Harvard. After my PhD, I spent nine years as a postdoc, first at the MIT, then at UBC, and finally, as the Delta-ITP fellow at the University of Amsterdam. I’m currently a member of the Geometry, Analysis and Gravitation Center of the School of Mathematical Sciences at Queen Mary University of London and a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow .