Meet our Management Team
Dedicated to ensuring NoorDx continues to advance disease and environmental research to improve the lives of people in Saudi Arabia and across the MENA region, our management team focuses on major financial, strategic and operational decisions for the entire company.
Dillon Fritz, PhD
Co-Founder and CEO
Dillon co-founded NoorDx in 2018 while serving as Head of Bio Innovation at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), where he had been since 2009 as a founding member of the Institution. Prior to taking the role as CEO, he worked with Saudi Aramco to develop and oversee programs related to strategic research partnership and early-stage innovation.
Dillon is a molecular biochemist by training, receiving his PhD from the Florida State University College of Medicine. He continued his research training as a National Cancer Institute Postdoctoral Fellow at the H Lee Moffitt Cancer Center, focusing on the molecular mechanisms of cancer metastasis and development of genome-driven therapeutics.
Dillon’s passion and drive to deliver critical genetic testing and precision medicine innovation to the Kingdom is rooted in him having spent most of his career in Saudi Arabia, in addition to growing-up in the Eastern Province.
Sami Al-Qarawi, MD, PhD
Co-founder and CMO
Sami Algarawi is a Saudi physician and scientist, with extensive expereince in genetic-based diagnostics and clinical lab medicine.
He received his medical training in Germany, followed by postdoctoral research on retroviral mediated gene transfer at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France. In 2002, he was appointed Consultant Geneticist at King Faisal Specialist Hospital, where he co-founded the first clinical Medical Genetics Department in Saudi Arabia and set up the first molecular diagnostic sequencing lab using Sanger sequencing. In 2008 he joined KAUST to set up the genomics core facility, where he established and supervised until 2016 the largest high throughput sequencing and proteomics facility in the MENA region.
In 2018 he joined NoorDx, where he currently serves as Chief Medical Officer.
Sharif Hala, PhD
Co-Founder and General Manager
A prominent biomedical researcher, Sharif Hala co-founded NoorDx with Dillon Fritz while working at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology’s (KAUST) Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, where his research concentrated on pathogen genomics and clinical microbiology.
His further educational studies were undertaken at the University of Aberdeen in the UK, where he acquired a bachelor’s degree in molecular biology and a master’s degree in medical molecular genetics. Here, he completed multiple projects at the university’s Institute of Medical Science. Sharif would go on to also carry out stem cell training research projects at the University of Oxford.
More recently, Sharif organized a consortium and framework for research into COVID-19 across four cities in Saudi Arabia and established the Infectious Disease Research Laboratory at King Abdullah Medical Research Centre. As Team Leader, he steered multiple projects in pathogen genetics, public health and antimicrobial resistance.
Naif Almontashiri, PhD
Chief Genetic Officer
Naif holds a number of academic, scientific and professional positions at organizations in Saudi Arabia and beyond. Most recently, he became Associate Editor of the Molecular Genetics section of the journal Clinical Chemistry. This is the flagship publication of the American Association for Clinical Chemistry.
Since 2020, he has also been serving as Dean of Scientific Research at Taibah University in Almadinah Almunawrah, Saudi Arabia, alongside an important role as Director of the Center for Genetics and Inherited Disorders.
Naif completed his bachelor’s degree in medical sciences at Umm Al Qura University’s College of Medicine and Medical Sciences in 2005, before acquiring his masters in cardiovascular genetics at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, where he also completed his PhD in 2015.
After this, he moved to Harvard Medical School. Here, he served as a ABMGG Clinical Molecular Genetic Fellow at the Laboratory for Molecular Medicine as well as a ABMGG Clinical Biochemical Genetic Fellow at Boston Children`s Hospital.
Ashraf Dallol, PhD
Consultant and Senior Laboratory Director
Ashraf has over 20 years of research experience using genetic and epigenetic technologies and approaches. These endeavours have led to more than 50 high-quality publications.
Ashraf plays an important role in overseeing the epigenetic/genomic profiling of breast and colon cancer in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In addition, he works to advance the understanding of molecular mechanisms underlying common genetic diseases.
Ashraf graduated with a first-class honors degree in Biomedical Sciences at the University of Ulster in the UK, where he also completed his PhD. His employment career started as a Senior Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University Birmingham in 1999, and since then he has held several positions at institutions such as the King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah and Consultant Office for Medical Sciences.
Ashraf, who is a fluent English and Arabic writer and speaker, joined NoorDx at the end of 2021 as a consultant and Senior Laboratory Director.
Hani El-Mowafy
Marketing Director
Hani is responsible for NoorDx’s marketing and communications strategies. He joined NoorDx in January 2022 from Alliance Global, where he held strategic sales and business development positions to drive growth across key markets such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
Between 2002 and 2007, Hani studied in Egypt at Alexandria University where he earned a Bachelor of Microbiology. Over the years, he has gained detailed knowledge of the genomic medical sales and healthcare markets. His employment career started in 2007 at pharmaceutical field in Egypt, where a key part of his role involved the organization of conferences for healthcare professionals.
Since then, Hani has built up a strong track record of delivering growth to a variety of businesses operating in the medical industry, moving to work in Saudi Arabia in 2010. He is a native Arabic speaker with strong written and spoken skills in English.
Omar S. Bajobair
Information Technology Manager
Omar is head of NoorDx’s information technology department.
Responsible for the upkeep and development of our applications and technology infrastructure, he joined the organization in October 2021 from Creative Telecom Company (CTC), where he project managed the company’s contract with Saudi Telecom Company (STC) on the MW EBU Last Mile development.
Omar’s working career began in 2007 as a contract programmer with the Saudi Ministry of Health. While there, he worked on their highly complex government-backed Hospital Integration System. From here, he moved into the private sector to provide IT technical support for Waseela before moving into the domain of networking infrastructure as a field engineer where he worked with numerous large technology organizations including of Mobily, Huawei and STC.
Between 2003 and 2007, Omar studied in India at the University of Pune, earning a Bachelor of Science degree.