Tarek studied biotechnology at the Technical University of Berlin, majoring in industrial biotechnology. In 2017 he spent over a year at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm to work on his master’s thesis with the focus on a spider silk-based biomaterial for 3D skin tissue constructs and graduated in 2019.  Thereafter he continued the work at KTH until he started his PhD project at the Applied stem cells technologies group in June 2019, under the supervision of Andries van der Meer . As an early-stage researcher of the EUROoC MSCA ITN, Tarek is working in a trans-European interdisciplinary network to develop Organ-on-a-chip technology, with a special focus on advanced Retina-on-chip models.