| Nizi Ahmed, Niyaz Ahmed | |
|---|---|
| Born | December 25, 1971 Paras, India |
| Nationality | India |
| Fields | Bacterial Evolution and Genomics |
| Institutions | University of Hyderabad (2008 -) Universiti Malaya (2010 -) and Institute of Life Sciences, Hyderabad (2011 -) |
| Alma mater | Manipal University (Ph.D) |
Niyaz Ahmed is an Indian professor of microbial sciences, a veterinarian by training, science blogger, and an Open Access advocate based in Hyderabad, India.[1]
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Ahmed graduated in Veterinary Medicine in 1995 (Nagpur) and obtained further degrees in Animal Biotechnology (MS) (NDRI, Karnal) and Molecular Medicine (PhD) (Manipal University). He joined CDFD in Hyderabad as a tenured faculty member (Staff Scientist) in 1998. In December 2008 he moved to the University of Hyderabad as Associate Professor of Biotechnology and since then has been involved in graduate teaching and research supervision at the School of Life Sciences. Ahmed is also affiliated with the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia as an Adjunct Professor of Molecular Biosciences at the Institute of Biological Sciences. He also serves as Professor of Chemical Biology (Adjunct) at the Institute of Life Sciences Hyderabad, India.
Ahmed serves as Section Editor (Genomics and Microbiology)[2] of PLoS ONE, published by the Public Library of Science (PLoS), USA. Currently, he is also providing editorial oversight to the "PLoS ONE Prokaryotic Genome Collection".[3] Ahmed also serves as a member of the PLoS International Advisory Group.[4] More recently, he became one of the Editors-in-Chief of Gut Pathogens,[5] published by BioMed Central Ltd. (London). Ahmed is a member of the International Society for Genomic and Evolutionary Microbiology (Italy) and currently serves as its General Secretary. He is also a member of the Faculty of 1000 Biology[6] and has been elected to the Indian National Academy of Sciences.[7] Ahmed served as an expert evaluator/panelist for the research proposals submitted to European Commission's Seventh Framework Program. He is also the member of the expert collegium of the Skolkovo Foundation of the Russian Federation.
In addition to those mentioned above, Niyaz Ahmed is the member of the editorial boards of the following important journals:
1) Emerging Microbes and Infections [8] 2) Systems and Synthetic Biology [9] 3) Infectious Agents and Cancer [10] 4) Annals of Clinical Microbiology and Antimicrobials [11] 5) Journal of Molecular Engineering and Systems Biology [12]
Ahmed teaches courses in 1) Molecular Biology (laboratory), 2) Genomics, 3) Biosafety and Intellectual Property and 4) Research Ethics and Management for Master's and Doctoral students, at the School of Life Sciences, University of Hyderabad. His current research interests include genomics, evolution and molecular pathogenesis of the two co-evolved human pathogens, namely, Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Helicobacter pylori, in the context of evolution of adaptation mechanisms, and acquisition and optimization of virulence during colonization/infection. Ahmed also has interest in comparative genomics of bacterial pathogens obtained from single patients at different occasions and this approach nurtures his concept of 'chronological evolution and replicative genomics' as tools to study host-microbe interaction over time. Ahmed's group has developed a widely used multilocus sequence typing scheme for species level identification of pathogenic Leptospira with a potential to replace the highly ambiguous serotyping method that currently is used for Leptospiral strain identification.[13] Ahmed has also worked extensively on the nomenclature, taxonomic status, genome sequencing and functional characterization of Mycobacterium indicus pranii [14], a non-pathogenic mycobacterial species with very high translational promise as an immunotherapeutic.
Ahmed is also a Speaker of the International Graduate College - Functional molecular infection epidemiology - GRK1673, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), and heads the India arm of the GRK 1673.[15]