​Salim Bougouffa received his doctorate in Biotechnology in 2010 from the University of Manchester in the UK. He joined the laboratory of Professor Pei-Yuan Qian in the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology where he worked in the field of microbial ecology using NGS technology to study microbial communities from different environments. In 2013, Salim joined the lab of Professor Vladimir Bajic where he continues to work on similar themed research. More recently, Salim also works on plant genomes such that of wild tomatoes to establish the genomic basis for their stress-tolerance traits.