Abdoel El Ghalbzouri (1973) studied Biotechnology and Biochemistry (BSc, 1994-1997) in Etten-Leur, the Netherlands and Molecular and Cellular Biology (MSc, 1997-1999) at the Medical University Paris VI in Paris (France). In 2000, he started his PhD at the Department of Dermatology of the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC). During his PhD, he optimized the generation of reconstructed human skin models and extensively studied their use for research, diagnostic and clinical purposes.

In 2006 Abdoel became senior researcher (assistant professor) and started the “disease skin model” group. He has daily-supervised over more than 13 PhDs and as associate professor he currently supervises 3 PhD students, 1 Post-doc and technicians that are working on different areas of the skin for fundamental, clinical and commercial oriented research (e.g. skin cancer, skin aging, wound healing, microbiome/ bacterial infection). His group received the Public ‘Alternatives to Animal Use’ Award for mimicking squamous cell carcinoma in the skin model, and they received a Dutch Award for the best ZonMW project (Pearle-project): “Development of validated organotypic in vitro models leading to improved therapy of skin cancer”. In 2019 his group won the Translational research Prize for the Leiden Regenerative Medicine Platform.