Rana Abdelaal

I am Rana Abdelaal, and I recently completed my master's degree in Biotechnology at the American University in Cairo. I hold a bachelor's degree in Pharmacy.

The Skin Microbiome is dear and near to my heart, and I have an actual story behind it.

In 2019, I used to work in a pharmacy with a huge cosmetics section, and that's when my obsession with skin/ skincare started.

In 2020, during the COVID quarantine, while everyone was dancing to TikToks, I bought every skincare product I could lay my hands on, and I kept trying them out on myself, and I always wanted to try and experiment more.

Joining AUC in 2021, I wanted my research focus to be something related to the skin. But the path took me to working on the Gut Microbiome using stool samples. I was not thrilled about the stool, but I always knew it was part of the process. My brother, however, kept bullying me -jokingly, of course- we had so many jokes about the stool thing, and how I had all the possible options and chose it.

It all provoked me enough that one day, I held my phone open, googlescholar and wrote "Skin Microbiome". I found that there are actually papers about the topic, and it's a real, actual thing that exists. I wished I could work on that, but then I turned off my phone and went to sleep.

After a while, I told my advisor about the "Skin Microbiome" expecting him to dismiss the idea as a bad, non-feasible one. To my complete surprise, he liked it a lot and got excited about it. I completely panicked. He encouraged me to pursue the idea, and I panicked even more. He kept encouraging me, and I kept saying it won't work. But then I did a pretty intense overthinking session and decided to go for it.

This is me poured into a research project, combining my pharmaceutical background, my personal passion with everything skin-related, and my current interest in the human microbiome. I feel lucky to be able to work on something I love.

October 2025