Dr Bahijja Raimi-Abraham

Biography

Dr Bahijja Raimi-Abraham is a pharmacist, Lecturer in Pharmaceutics at King’s, Founder of King’s College London Fight the Fakes and Academic Lead. She leads her research group 'The Raimi-Abraham Group'.

Dr Raimi-Abraham has been developing her independent line of research in solving pharmaceutical challenges in infectious diseases with a focus on malaria and latent and asymptomatic infections. Her research activities address the following

• Pharmaceutical materials and innovative manufacture to engineer next generation in vitro, 3D infection models, using synthetic nanofibrous biomimetic scaffolds. This work supports the generation of spheroid infectious disease models which will be used for drug discovery screening to develop new and improved therapies and diagnostics (ongoing King’s -China Scholarship Council and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) funded PhD projects).
• Nano-facilitated strategies in infection detection and treatment using plant-mediated green synthesis of metallodrugs (a pharmaceutical drug product that contains a metal as an active ingredient) with theranostic potential for the simultaneous detection and treatment of latent and asymptomatic infections (ongoing Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) funded PhD Project).
• An advocacy and awareness, and stakeholder engagement approach to understand and explore the global impact of substandard and falsified (SF) anti-infectives as part of King’s College London Fight the Fakes.

Prior to her current position at King's, Dr Raimi-Abraham held positions at University College London (UCL) as an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) postdoctoral researcher position and at the European Medicines Agency (EMA) as a seconded Quality National Expert.

Dr Raimi-Abraham recently founded and hosts Monday Science, a weekly podcast which discusses the latest in Science, Health and Technology. Monday Science recently received funding from the Royal Society of Chemistry towards a project aimed at opening conversations about diversity in chemical sciences and engaging the public with chemistry using creative approaches.

Dr Raimi-Abraham has an extensive and original public engagement portfolio which includes uniquely exploring the use of street art to engage the public with Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), TEDx talk (TEDx Talk title 'Elements of Change: Becoming an Independent Researcher'), participation in the 'Go and No-go pills' Somerset House 24/7 exhibition, visited by ~35,000 people (October 2019 – February 2020). More recently, Dr Raimi-Abraham worked with BBC News Africa on their campaign to raise awareness on the impact of fake medicines in Africa “How can you tell the difference between real and fake medicines? ”, “Spotting fake medicines with your mobile phone” and “BBC News – People Fixing the World” (produced by Hannah Gelbart).

Dr Raimi-Abraham’s work in research-informed teaching has also been recognised by the Nuffield Foundation.

Teaching

Dr Bahijja Raimi-Abraham is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (recognition reference: PR163577).

Dr Raimi-Abraham teaches on both undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG) taught programs within the School of Bioscience Education, namely the MPharm Programme (Physical Pharmaceutics (30 credit, level 4), Formulation and Analysis of Drugs (30 credit, level 5), Emerging Therapeutics and Modern Medicine (30 credit, level 7), Research Project, MSc Pharmaceutical Technology, MSc Biomedical and Molecular Sciences Research and MSc Translational Cancer. Dr Raimi-Abraham is the Physical Pharmaceutics Module Lead.

She also regularly supervises UG and PG research projects which often result in publications, with the student being either first or second authors. Dr Raimi-Abraham is happy to host pharmacy students in her lab and recently hosted an exchange pharmacy student from the United States of America (funded and facilitated by The International Pharmaceutical Students' Federation) and supported the student to write a commentary about their experience which was published in the American Journal of Health Systems Pharmacy.