New Faculty Profile
Ahmad Nabhan: Bringing an Industry Perspective
By Kirsten Mickelwait
Assistant Professor Ahmad Nabhan, who joined MCB’s faculty in January 2025, brings some valuable insight to his new position. Because he did his postdoc research at the renowned biotech firm, Genentech, he brings a valuable industry perspective to his new academic role.
His decision to move from industry back to an academic setting was not made lightly. “There are exceptions to this rule, of course, but in my view the industrial culture is much more about taking reformed ideas and applying them at scale,” he says. “The truly creative and ground-breaking work takes a lot of fortitude and risk-taking. In my opinion, that’s very possible and encouraged in academia, but very difficult to do in industry.”
Nabhan is in the process of setting up his lab and will begin teaching in the fall. His research is broadly interested in the idea of communication across cells. One example is studying organisms like snails, salamanders, and coral reefs where damaged tissues are repaired and regenerated through hundreds of different stem cells. These cells function by receiving signals from the environment and then responding to those signals—a kind of wiring of stimulus-response pathways and genes within the system. What's surprising is that the components making up this wiring are very similar across species, from flatworms to humans.
“It’s amazing that all of these organisms use the same ten or so pathways that exist across all these settings,” he says. “By utilizing this combination of pathways again and again and again, a really remarkable diversity of shapes and forms is generated. In humans, however, stem cells don’t have the same robust ability to regenerate as in other organisms, so our bodily functions ultimately decline. Species like the salamander, the flatworm, and the zebrafish are able to repair and regenerate tissues.
“It's not that there are exotic genes or magical pathways,” he says. “It's the same components, just wired differently, and the cells are talking to each other differently, activating and inactivating distinct pathways at the right time. We believe that by understanding and deciphering these pathways, and then developing tools to rewire them, we can essentially recapitulate these incredible feats of regeneration.”
Because Nabhan spent his postdoc in the industrial environment, he’s already seen the translational potential for his research, which lies largely in the treatment or prevention of fibrosis and other lung diseases. Having seen that potential, he was eager to focus on the most basic questions of his research direction, while staying active on the translational path.
“I think that's the great thing about being a scientist today,” he says. “You can go all the way from identifying a molecule, or you can start at the other end with a basic question like, how does this work at the physiological level? And you might do that, realistically, in the space of ten years.”
Born and raised in Jordan, Nabhan immigrated to the U.S. with his family when he was 12. The remainder of his youth was spent in Southern California before receiving his bachelor’s degree in pharmacology from UC Santa Barbara. A master’s in biochemistry from San Francisco State University was followed by a PhD in biochemistry at Stanford, before joining Genentech as a postdoc.
His parents were keen on him becoming a doctor, but Nabhan was headed in a different direction. “I think medicine is a qualitatively different experience,” he says. “It’s a noble profession, to be sure, but you're really taking fully formed ideas and applying existing knowledge. It's almost like being a virtuoso pianist. You play the keys exactly in the same way every single time. Whereas, to me, being a scientist is more like being a writer: someone who tries different approaches, fails repeatedly, and creates something new. It’s more of a creative process.”
The choice to join MCB was an easy decision, he says, because of its stellar reputation for the quality of its research, its students, and its genuinely collaborative culture. The desire to form a community and be a mentor was also strong. “My family came from the Middle East, and I like to think that that allows me to explore problems in a different way and make unique contributions here at Berkeley,” he says. He hopes his own lab will be a welcoming place for every kind of student and all kinds of new ideas.
To establish his MCB lab, Nabhan brought along his research assistant from Genentech to help launch the facility. He’s hired a second research tech, and soon expects a couple of PhD students on rotation. Within the next two or three years, he hopes to grow his lab team to a total of about ten people.
“It’s super exciting to come to MCB at this point in my career, bringing to this field what has already been brewing at Berkeley,” he says. “Even during my interview, it felt very synergistic. It was clear to me that the scientists and students at MCB had a great community that I wanted to be a part of.”
Learn more about research in the Nabhan Lab: mcb.berkeley.edu/faculty/cdp/nabhana
Banner image: Matt Beardsley
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