Ridha was born and raised in Al-Ahsa, Saudi Arabia and came to Groningen in 2016 to study medicine. After exciting, rewarding and intellectually challenging experience during his bachelor project in the cardiology department in 2020, he decided to pursue his interest in research and apply for an MD/PhD. His ambition to become a physician-scientist in the future is what drew him to apply for an MD/PhD position. After finishing his first year of clinical rotations in the UMCG hospital, Ridha started as an MD/PhD candidate in 2022 under supervision of dr. Niels Grote Beverborg, dr. Nils Bömer and prof.dr.Peter van der Meer. His project is focused on understanding the pathophysiology and causes leading to iron deficiency in patients with heart failure.
By combining proteomic, genomic and transcriptomic data from large studies such as the BIOSTAT and Lifelines cohorts, Ridha aims to identify factors leading to iron deficiency in patients with heart failure. These factors can be targeted as a personalized approach of treating iron deficiency in patients with heart failure. Furthermore, he will be working on a clinical trial to establish the effectiveness of identifying and treating the underlying causal factors behind iron deficiency in heart failure instead of treating their consequence.