Much has been made out of Magdy Elnashar, the man arrested in Cairo today in relation to the London bombings, and his status as a chemistry student today, writes Polly Curtis. In fact Elnasher was awarded a doctorate in May by Leeds university after a five-year study. As a postgraduate student he would most likely have been teaching undergraduate students while doing his research and he would have had to have been a very promising scientist to have got there - the department ranks 18 in the country in the Guardian’s university guide. He was also awarded a grant for his study from Yorkshire Forward, the regional development agency, of up to £30,000 for his last year of research.
The title of his study - "Development of a novel matrix for the immobilisation of enzymes for biotechnology" - doesn’t give much away. The university offered the following note "for guidance”" to journalists on Elnashar’s research today: "... the research is in an area of ‘green’ environment-friendly biochemistry, involving enzymes and chemically inactive substances. Its applications are in food and environmental science".
We asked the Royal Society of Chemistry whether they could help us understand, from that information, what skills and knowledge Alnashar would have. "It is too vague to make a specific comment on. We wouldn’t even know which scientist to ask to look at it. We need more information for us to make further comments," they told us.
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