On Jan 25 the Hayward Rotary Club speaker will be Dr. Bassam El-Fahmawi, PhD. president/CTO and founder of Mawi DNA Technologies. He has more than 25 years experience in genomics sample preparation and holds several patents for simplifying nucleic acid purification technology. He launched his company in 2014. When the pandemic hit he had four employees at his Hayward plant. By the summer, he had 45 employees and his company was continuing to grow, in large part because of his development of a product called the iSWAB Microbiome Collection Kit, a revolutionary way to test for COVID-19.
One of the first in Hayward to connect with Dr. El-Fahmawi at the onset of the pandemic was Hayward Rotarian and fire chief Garrett Contreras, who initiated one of the Bay Area’s first testing operations here.
Early in his career Dr. El-Fahmawi managed the commercialization of nucleic acid purification technology at both Beckman Coulter Genomics (formerly Agencourt), and Corning. He has patents for simplifying nucleic acid purification technology and sample collection. Dr. El-Fahmawi earned his Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Alberta. You can read more about it the company’s technology here https://mawidna.com/the-iswab-