Nizar Ibrahim

Nizar Ibrahim (born in 1982) is a US-based German-Moroccan vertebrate paleontologist and comparative anatomist. He is currently an assistant professor at the University of Detroit Mercy. Ibrahim has led several expeditons to Africa's Sahara and is notable for his research on fossil vertebrates from the Kem Kem Group, including pterosaurs, crocodyliforms, and dinosaurs. In recent years, research led by Ibrahim radically changed ideas about the morphology and life habits of one of the largest predatory dinosaurs, "Spinosaurus aegyptiacus". Ibrahim also has interests in bioinformatics and contributed to the NSF-funded Phenoscape project. He regularly engages with the public and is a speaker with the National Geographic Speakers Bureau.
Biography.
Youth and education.
Nizar Ibrahim was born on September 8th, 1982 in Berlin, Germany. He has German and Moroccan ancestry, with his grandfather being the third Prime Minister of Morocco, Abdallah Ibrahim. Since his childhood, he has been very enthusiastic about animals and their diversity, anatomy, and evolution. He also loved fiction and nonfiction stories of adventures around the world. At 5 years old, he decided that he was going to become a paleontologist while reading a book on dinosaurs.
He obtained a Bachelor of science in geology and biology from the University of Bristol in 2006. In 2011, he obtained his PhD from University College Dublin's School of Medicine and Medical Science. He carried out his postdoctoral studies at the University of Chicago for four years.
Career.
He is currently an assistant professor at the University of Detroit Mercy, where he teaches human anatomy, comparative anatomy, and evolution. Ibrahim is also a visiting researcher at the University of Portsmouth. In Morocco, he works with a number of Moroccan researchers and students based at Hassan II University. Ibrahim is one of 21 people selected as TED fellow in 2015, which makes him the "first paleontologist in the history of the program". 