Dr. Khalid Fakhro 

Board Member

Chief Research Officer, Sidra Medicine

Prof. Khalid Fakhro is the Chief of Research and Chair of the Precision Medicine Program at Sidra Medicine, the largest tertiary women and children’s hospital in Qatar. In this role, Dr Fakhro oversees a >250 translational, clinical and implementation studies designed to advance diagnostic and biomarker discovery, and tailor personalized therapies for patients with rare and complex disease. In addition to his executive role, Dr Fakhro leads the Laboratory of Human Genetics and Genomics, which brings emerging genomic technologies closer to the patient’s bedside.

Over the past decade, his group has sequenced thousands of Qatari and Middle Eastern genomes, leading gene discovery efforts for a wide range of rare disorders, as well as landmark studies on population structure, genome structural variation, disease multi-omics, and the role of Islamic ethics in genome research. His lab has been awarded competitive grants exceeding $8m to study rare diseases and Autism, and their discoveries have featured in high-impact journals worldwide. Dr Fakhro serves multiple leadership roles in Qatar’s growing biomedical and academic ecosystems, including as Board Member of the Qatar Precision Medicine Institute and of Diabetes Qatar. He also holds faculty appointments at both Weill-Cornell Medicine and Hamad Bin Khalifa University, where he supervises Master’s and PhD students in genomics and precision medicine.