Metwaly is a postodoctoral research fellow in the chair of nutrition and immunology at the Technical University of Munich. She completed her PhD in microbiology and immunology at the Technical University of Munich.

Metwaly completed her PhD at the Technische Universität München in 2019, studying the functional role of gut microbiota in patients with inflammatory bowel diseases, using mouse models. Ever since her research has focused on understanding the role of gut bacteria and their metabolites in signaling and function on these three levels, molecular signal integration, cellular phenotypic outcome and translatory aspects in relation to pathological situations.

Compositional and functional changes in the intestinal microbiome play a fundamental role in the pathogenesis of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). Nevertheless, the complexity and multifactorial disease pathogenesis, as well as the existence of a variety of confounding factors in human studies, continue to present major challenges to the clinical implementation of microbiome signatures in diagnosis, predicting prognosis and treatment decision making. Investigating the functional capacity of a given microbial signature by means of metagenomics and metabolomics approaches is, thus, indispensable to identify functional microbiome signatures of clinical relevance. Metwaly is interested in understanding mechanisms of adaptation and resilience of these complex microbial ecosystems towards changes in the intestinal milieu including inflammation and diet.