Dr. Hani Zakaria Asfour is the vice dean of the pharmacy school at King Abdul Aziz University (KAU) in Jeddah. Recently, KAU and Umm Al-Qura University signed an agreement with German pharmaceutical company Merck. The agreement aims to train Saudi pharmacists and provide an opportunity for academic staff at both universities to undertake joint research projects. The agreements were co-signed by the deans of pharmacy at KAU and Umm Al-Qura — Asfour and Faisal Al-Maliki, respectively — and Merck’s country manager in Saudi Arabia, Haitham Habashi. Asfour gained his bachelor’s degree in microbiology from KAU in 1997. He later obtained his master’s degree in molecular biology from the University of North Texas in the US in 2002. In 2006 Asfour was awarded his Ph.D. in molecular biology from the same university. He started his career as a teaching assistant in the medical biology department at KAU. He also worked as a teaching assistant at the biology department at UNT. After his Ph.D., when he returned to Saudi Arabia, he was promoted to be an assistant professor and the chairman of the medical biology department in KAU. Apart from his current role as a vice dean of the pharmacy school in KAU, Asfour is the lab supervisor at Princess Al-Jawhara Center of Excellence in Research of Hereditary Disorders and the deputy director for finance and administrative affairs at the same center. He is also the supervisor for academic affairs at the school of medicine and an assistant professor at the medical parasitology department at KAU. His Twitter handle is @AsfourHani.