The “Fantastic Voyage” of alumna Dr Reem Khojah: Connecting the beginning of KAUST to her research career in early cancer detection – by Melissa Pappas, (MS ‘17)

The 2021 Winter Enrichment Program (WEP) connects students and alumni across countries, time zones, and KAUST’s history. During this year’s Alumni Lecture Series we welcomed several Founding Class alumni back to KAUST including Reem Khojah (MS ’10). Reem is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Irvine, and she recently spoke to Alumni Affairs about KAUST’s influence on her path to success.  

Discovering a passion for research

After graduating from King Abdulaziz University with an undergraduate degree in Medical Applied Science, Khojah landed a job as a clinical laboratory scientist in Jeddah. It wasn’t long before she realized that her love for research and engineering would not be fostered in this position. Fortunately, the opportunity to apply to KAUST during its first year opened up possibilities she would never have expected.

Opportunities for international collaboration

KAUST encouraged international collaboration in Khojah’s area of biomedical engineering. While studying for her Masters degree, Khojah interned at The University of Cambridge in Professor Jim Haseloff and Professor Jim Ajioka’s labs, and the University of Toronto in Professor Shana Kelley’s lab

The connections she made during her summer internships proved to be very important in her next steps after KAUST

“During my internship, I learned new biomedical engineering research tools that enabled me to connect to researchers in California, where I wanted to move to be with my husband who was accepted into a PhD program at the University of California, Santa Barbara,” says Khojah. “Of course, our time at KAUST has to come to an end. Althkough I was working on my PhD already, I wanted to be with my husband, so I graduated with my MSc and applied to PhD programs in California.”

After many months in a long-distance marriage (to fellow KAUST alumnus Faisal Nawab, MS ’11), Khojah was offered a funded PhD position in Professor Dino Di Carlo’s lab at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“I was pleasantly surprised and very excited to be accepted into a great research lab at one of the top research institutes in the country, and to be in the same state as my husband,” says Khojah.

From a MS at KAUST to a PhD at UCLA

Khojah’s PhD examined how to manufacture microscopic motors on the size scale of a single human cell. She recently shared details of her thesis during 2021’s virtual WEP Alumni Lecture Series in her presentation: “Towards a ‘Fantastic Voyage’: Multiferroic Motors for Microsubmarines.”

“WEP was always one of my favorite events at KAUST, so I was honored to be invited to speak for the Alumni Lecture Series, even though it wouldn’t be in person,” says Khojah. “My husband had actually presented during a previous WEP on personalized medicine. The funny thing is, his research is more related to the 2021 theme, ‘Connectivity,’ and my research is more related to personalized medicine.

Khojah’s research is supported by the NSF funded center of Translational Applications of Nanoscale Multiferroic Systems (TANMS). TANMS interdisciplinary research teams use multiferroic materials, which are materials that possess more than one of the primary ferroic properties in the same phase. Those properties, ferromagnetism, ferroelectricity, and ferroelasticity, can be manipulated by applying an external magnetic/electric field or mechanical pressure. The manipulation of the material can be used to perform certain tasks on the microscale. Khojah led an interdisciplinary research group at UCLA and UC Berkeley to develop smart programmable multiferroic materials to automate single-cell selection based on functional and time-dependent properties, which remains a fundamental challenge for biotechnology and the development of optimal cell therapies.

Essentially, Khojah’s team created microscopic structures that could move within the human body or interact with cells outside of the body. The structures themselves can be designed to mimic tumors and then when exposed to living cells from a patient, scientists can observe the way those cells interact with each other. Research with multiferroic motors will eventually lead to personalized medicine and targeted drug delivery

The idea of miniaturizing machines to work on cell-scale issues in the human body has captivated society’s attention through the film industry much earlier than the invention of these technologies.

“I was actually inspired to do research on micro motors after watching the film from the 60’s, ‘Fantastic Voyage,’ where a team of scientists are miniaturized and put into a micro submarine to travel into the human brain,” says Khojah. “It’s crazy how the technology of miniature motors is now a reality.”

Pursuing a career in academia

After graduating with her PhD, Khojah started a postdoctoral fellowship, and currently mentors graduate students with the perspective of both the medical industry and academic experience

“I remember the hardest part of grad school was understanding how to use the freedom and creativity of asking your own unique research questions while maintaining a structure to actually get the work done. I try to provide the structure and guidance for my students so that they can take risks in a safe place in the same way that KAUST did that for me,” says Khojah.

Khojah explains how she strives to create a similar supportive experience for her graduate students, and reflects on her time at KAUST as being very unique.

“KAUST was very successful at creating a micro community where everyone knew everyone. I could walk into the cafeteria and always find friends to sit with. Other universities and institutions did not have that close-knit community. I missed that and the amazing lab facilities when I was working in other places,” says Khojah. “Hopefully I bring some of that supportive community feel to my current lab.”

Khojah is enjoying life in Orange county with her husband and son. While working from home, she has taken up surfing with her son to get outside and connect with the place she now calls home. She remains close with many of her classmates from KAUST’s Founding Class, and always enjoys sharing KAUST memories.