PhD - Lyon, France - Available April 2026
Portfolio Portfolio

Mohamad AL HAJJ

Research and Development - Communication - Impact

I spent 4+ years doing cancer research before realizing I knew almost nothing about what happens to science after the lab. That gap bothered me enough to do something about it.

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K+ Scientists reached every month
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+ Researchers personally mentored
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+ Newsletter subscribers
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+ Years in cancer research
Technology Transfer Oncology PhD Science Communication Genome Integrity CVLab La Valorisation Academia to Industry Lyon, France Technology Transfer Oncology PhD Science Communication Genome Integrity CVLab La Valorisation Academia to Industry Lyon, France
What I Build
Projects &
Initiatives
Three things I built because they didn't exist when I needed them.
Career Mentoring
CVLab

Most researchers are more capable than their CVs suggest - they just don't have the language to say it. CVLab started as a side project to help a few friends. It became something bigger: 100+ researchers mentored, a growing community of scientists figuring out what comes next.

100+
Researchers mentored
Newsletter - French
La Valorisation

Nobody taught me what a SATT was during my PhD. La Valorisation exists because that information shouldn't be reserved for insiders - it should reach every researcher, early enough to matter.

50K+
Readers / month
Newsletter - English
Academia to Industry

The hardest part of leaving academia isn't finding a job - it's letting go of the belief that your PhD is only useful in a lab.

1,200+
Subscribers
Background
Who I Am

I did my PhD in oncology. Cancer research. The kind of field where the distance between a discovery and a patient who needs it can feel unbridgeable. That gap convinced me early that the most capable science is not the science that gets published - it's the science that leaves the lab.

Founder - CVLab
2025 - Present
Building a mentoring platform, two newsletters, and a community of scientists brave enough to think beyond the lab.
PhD in Oncology - CRCM, Aix-Marseille University
2021 - 2024
Four years studying how telomeres behave under stress, developing chromatin-mapping assays from scratch, and learning that rigorous science is only half the work.
Master's Researcher - AUB & ERIBA
2019
Two labs, two countries, one project on senolytic compounds. Learned early that good science requires as much coordination as it does pipetting.
Publication - In Review

Al Hajj et al. 2025 - "Ctf18-dependent localization of interstitial telomeric sequences to nuclear pore complexes prevents chromosome fragility" - Nucleic Acids Research (IF 16.6)

Expertise

Tech TransferSATT / PUITRL & IP Horizon EuropeEIC / RIA / IAANR Funding Project ManagementScientific Communication Researcher CoachingGxP / SOP / ALCOA+ Deeptech EcosystemsAI in Research Genome BiologyTelomere BiologyCertified Nutritionist

Community

Elected PhD Representative - CRCM (2 years)Voice for 70+ doctoral students. Learned that institutional change is slow, but possible.
Speaker - Forum Biotechno-SudRan the "Academia to Industry" workshop for a mixed audience of PhDs, postdocs, and industry professionals.
Research & Development
Technical Expertise
Chromatin & DNA Repair
  • TurboID, APEX2
  • ChEC / ChEC-qPCR
  • DNA damage & repair assays
  • Senescence & viability assays
  • High-throughput mutant screens (100+)
Molecular & Cellular Biology
  • Cell culture: yeast, bacteria, MCF-7, MDA-231, HUT102
  • Gene deletion, fusion, transformations
  • RT-qPCR, PCR, TeloPCR
  • DNA / RNA extraction
Protein & Chromatin Workflows
  • Western & Southern blotting
  • Immunoprecipitation (IP)
  • Proteomic sample preparation
  • Protein purification
Microscopy & Staining
  • Fluorescent & confocal microscopy
  • Micromanipulator
  • DAPI, Hoechst, EdU, BrdU
  • Beta-galactosidase, acridine orange
  • Bradford, MTT, silver staining
Data & Computational Tools
  • ImageJ, CellProfiler, ImageQTL
  • GraphPad Prism, Perseus
  • SnapGene, ApE
  • Excel (advanced)
  • Basic Python, AI agent development
Scientific Communication
  • 5 oral + 2 poster presentations
  • Collaborations: France, Netherlands, Lebanon
  • Supervised 2 MSc students + 1 research engineer
  • Contributed to a 600K EUR collaborative grant
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