Unwavering commitment to help others
Nicolla Hewitt
Saudi Gazette
HARVARD University is one of the best-known educational institutes in the world. Located just outside Boston in the United States, Harvard is where some of the most famous people of the globe have gone for an education as undergraduates, law or medical students.
US presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, John F. Kennedy and Theodore Roosevelt attended this Ivy League College, as did Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Now there is a graduate of the Saudi National Guard – who aims to become as famous as these well-known Harvard alumni. His name is Dr. Fahad Mohammad Al-Hakami.
Dr. Al-Hakami, 35, joined the Harvard Clinical Molecular Genetics fellowship that qualified for the American Clinical Molecular Genetics Board in July 2014. Clinical Molecular Genetics is not exactly a subject that many people specialize in, but it is hugely important to all of us.
The specialty focuses on the discovery and diagnosis of genetic errors that might predispose someone to a hereditary disorder. Ironically, Dr. Al-Hakami became interested in this field when he was a young boy attending a school in Jazan.
In an interview with the Saudi Gazette from Harvard University, he explained: “When I was 6 years old I met a child with 6 fingers who became my friend. I kept asking my teacher why he had 6 fingers, when everyone else had five. All my teacher could say was ‘That it’s from God.’ So I went through high school and this question stayed in my head.
I kept asking the question and still nobody could give me the right answer. So then I decided to do my bachelor’s degree in Allied Health Sciences at King Abdulaziz University, and I still asked the question.
No one had the answer. Genetics was still a very new field in Saudi Arabia in 1999. So from then on to 2003 when I graduated, I kept looking for the right answer. I knew I would get the answer one day, but I graduated without one.”
It was during this time when 19-year-old Al-Hakami attended a medical conference in Jeddah, which would ultimately change his life, and end up getting him a scholarship at Harvard Medical School. A physician was addressing the conference who was a graduate of Harvard.
Speaking to the Saudi Gazette, Al-Hakami said: “Everyone was whispering he did a degree there but he looked like all of us so I decided ‘If he could get to Harvard, so can I.” Soon the two men were talking and Al-Hakami asked him how he ended up at the medical school at one of the most famous universities in the world.
The words of advice were: “Come prepared with a message of what you want to change? What do you think you can add to the world? Tell them it’s not just about saying you want to study at Harvard but about making a change.
Tell them why you want the world to know about something and how you want to fix it in 10 years time. Come with big goals.” Setting out to achieve those big goals became Al-Hakami’s calling. He stayed focused on being accepted to Harvard and finding the answer to why some people are born with six fingers.
In 2009, he earned a fully sponsored scholarship by the Saudi Arabian National Guard to do an MSc and PhD in genetics. “During the master’s degree I asked a professor about the fingers. He said it was because of a mutation in a developmental gene called ‘Hox.’
It’s a family of genes responsible for building the fetuses. If there is a problem in one of these genes then a problem can appear in the child.”
Al-Hakami said. By then Al-Hakami was sure this was something he wanted to continue to study. When the time came for an interview for Harvard Medical School, he found himself up against over 1,000 applicants. Seventy of them were for a scholarship and luckily for Al-Hakami he was one of four to get accepted.
During the two and a half hour interview process via Skype, the question came up as to “How do you want to change the world medically.” So he told them about the story of the child with 6 fingers. He said this was common in Saudi Arabia and other areas of the Middle East, so he wanted to attend Harvard to find a solution and to learn how to diagnose and find treatment so he could bring those skills back to the Kingdom.
One of the interviewers was Heidi Rehm, director of the Laboratory for Molecular Medicine and associate professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School. She is one of the best-known geneticists in the United States and was recently invited to meet with President Barack Obama.
Al-Hakami’s commitment to genetic diagnostics and his education in the United States led him to being chosen to meet with Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman during his recent trip to Washington D.C.
In his interview with the Saudi Gazette, Dr. Al-Hakami said King Salman told him that he was happy that a Saudi scholar from a country, that some people think as just a desert, is good enough to be at this prestigious teaching institution.
A few weeks before meeting King Salman, Al-Hakami received a call from National Guard Minister Prince Miteb Bin Abdullah. He also congratulated him for being at Harvard and said he will strongly support his plan to establish a genetics diagnostic lab at King Abdulaziz Medical City in Jeddah when his studies in the United States are completed.
For now it is clear, the leadership in the Kingdom is watching Dr. Al Hakami’s commitment to helping others, through his unwavering research into diagnosing hereditary disorders. It seems Harvard is about to add yet another famous alumni to its list of those who make an impact. Now it is someone from Saudi Arabia!
