In Italy I am very well off, I feel very much at home

Originally from Alexandria, Egypt, Marwa is 31 years old and a biotechnologist and molecular biologist. She first came to Italy in 2014 to participate in an international Euro-Mediterranean master’s program in neuroscience and biotechnology involving the universities of Egypt, Morocco and Lebanon and three European universities, Turin, Valencia and Bordeaux.

Returning to Egypt at the end of the project, Marwa returned to Italy the following year on a World Wide Project fellowship. In 2016, she was awarded a doctoral fellowship at the University of Turin in the Department of Clinical and Biological Sciences.

Marwa speaks six languages (Arabic, English, French, Italian, Spanish and some Turkish).

She traveled around Europe, where he lived for a year in Spain and a year in Germany, an experience he would not repeat, however. She started learning Italian in Egypt as soon as she received her acceptance letter into the master’s program. She then quickly integrated into Italy, both socially and work-wise, which allowed her to improve her level of Italian.
Her initial idea was to return to Egypt once she finished her master’s degree. Indeed, she thought she would find work more easily in her home country, but she was disappointed when she realized that research was not valued at the same level as in Italy. She therefore decided that her future in research would be in Italy, which she now considers her home.

In 2021 Marwa received her Ph.D. in “Peripheral Nerve Regeneration,” and since December 2022 she has been a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Turin’s San Luigi Hospital in Orbassano. “I really enjoy what I do and it is very friendly, and the person in charge of my research project is also very helpful. In Italy I am very comfortable, I really feel at home”.

Marwa is so comfortable in Italy that she does not plan to return to Egypt, even though she misses her family and the specialities cooked by her mother.

“I love my country but I am sad to think that we are no longer the great civilization we once were”.

She adds that culturally, unfortunately, as a woman in Egypt, she has less freedom than men.