Hamza El Dorry was a faculty member in the Biology Department at the American University in Cairo (AUC) from 2005 to 2017. He provides background on his family, and describes his move from Egypt to Brazil in the 1960s for doctoral studies in biochemistry, his later study in the United States, and his career in biochemistry and molecular biology in both countries over several decades. He discusses joining AUC upon his return to Egypt in 2005, and setting up a biotechnology laboratory at AUC’s Yousef Jameel Science and Technology Research Center. He tells of how the Biology Department’s focus developed while he was Chair, through introduction of personnel and research facilities in genomics and computational biology and connection with the PhD program in biotechnology. El Dorry also speaks about AUC’s collaboration with Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University for Science and Technology {KAUST}, including a project related to the Red Sea. The leadership style of administrators like Dean of School of Sciences and Engineering (and later Provost) Medhat Haroun are also covered, as well as the upper administration’s relationship with the faculty in 2016 and 2017, including contention over the Faculty Handbook
