12 Facts About Mona Seif

Mona Seif is a biology graduate student, investigating the BRCA1 breast cancer gene.

Mona Seif's father, Ahmed Seif, who died in 2014, was a human rights attorney and opposition leader who spent five years in prison during the Mubarak regime.

Mona Seif's mother, Laila Soueif, is an activist and a mathematics professor.

Mona Seif helped organize demonstrations against the Mubarak regime over the decades before his downfall.

Mona Seif's mother is "known on the streets as brash and courageous, and has on numerous occasions faced down baton-wielding policemen with nothing but her scolding, scathing, booming voice and steely eyes".

Mona Seif is studying the BRCA1 breast cancer gene and its mutation pattern in Egyptian patients.

Mona Seif says she has two full-time careers: one in cancer research, and another in human rights activism.

Mona Seif is a founding member of No to Military Trials for Civilians, a group pushing for the release of those detained during the revolution; and end to trials of civilians by military courts; transfer of all such civilian facing trial to the jurisdiction of civilian courts; and the investigation of torture allegations involving military police.

Mona Seif wrote on her blog Ma3t, about the military police during crackdowns on Tahrir protesters, requesting people come forward with their stories.

Mona Seif estimates that military courts have sentenced 7,000 civilians since former Hosni Mubarak's ouster in February, 2011.

Part of Mona Seif's project involves asking detainees who have been released to record what happened to them.

When it was announced in April 2013 that Mona Seif was a finalist for the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders presented by Human Rights Watch, both she and HRW were criticised for what some considered taking a firm pro-Palestinian stance.