Wael N. El-Nachef, MD, PhD

Dr. Wael El-Nachef completed his undergraduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, with a double major in Rhetoric and Public Health. He then completed medical school at Northwestern University and Internal Medicine residency training at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. He subsequently undertook a research fellowship at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, funded by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, where he explored tissue engineering solutions to enteric neuropathies such as Hirschsprung disease.
Dr. El-Nachef first joined UCLA for his clinical fellowship training in Gastroenterology, earning board certification in 2018. During his fellowship, he was admitted to the UCLA Specialty Training and Advanced Research program, which supported his graduate studies in the Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Integrative Physiology. Working in the laboratory of Dr. Marianne Bronner at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), he was awarded a PhD in 2019 for his work on enteric neurogenesis in post-embryonic development.
Dr. El-Nachef continues to perform basic science research at both Caltech and UCLA, with a focus on enteric nervous system homeostasis, degeneration, and regeneration. His clinical interests include gastrointestinal complications of neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson's disease, and esophageal and gastrointestinal motility disorders.