Dr. Rashid Nazir

About

I graduated my BSc Honours degree in 2006 from Asia’s prominent agriculture institution i.e. University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Pakistan. During my MS, I won (2007) an international scholarship from the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan to pursue my MS leading to PhD in The Netherlands. From September 2007 to August 2008, I completed my MS research in the field of ‘Microbial Ecology’ and continued for the PhD in the same department. For my MS leading to the PhD, I worked with Prof. Jan Dirk van Elsas in the University of Groningen (in top 70 universities of the world) from where I received the PhD degree in 2012. My research work was focused on bacterial fungal interactions (BFI) in soil; bacterial diversity and abundance affected by soil fungi. My overseas scientific experience has exposed me to an incredibly diverse range of research areas and skills. After the PhD, I joined COMSATS Institute of Information Technology (Pakistan) and served (teaching and research) in the Department of Environmental Sciences. In 2015, I won the President’s International Fellowship and started my PostDoc in the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. Crossing from the Netherlands to Pakistan and China marked a significant inter-disciplinary leap from my background in fundamental mechanisms of microbial ecology to applied aspects of these interactions in nutrient cycling and environmental antibiosis.
I have, by now, published 42-international publications having average impact factor >3 and very well received in the scientific community with >2100 citations and H-index of 20.
Moreover, different research contents have been presented at international scientific fora including ISME, FEMS, BAGECO. My current research focus is bacterial fungal interactions & nutrient cycling and culturable antibiotic resistant bacterial populations in the mycorrhizosphere. I have also been involved in research related training of students in the areas of environmental sciences. Moreover, being in an academic institute, I have been involved in teaching as well, worked as a student-advisor and served different departmental duties assigned to me, on a regular basis.
Following were the awards and distinctions during my academic career:
- Fellowship award under ‘President’s International Fellowship Initiative (PIFI.2015-16)’ at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing.
- HEC funded ‘Travel Grant’ to participate in BAGECO-12 held in Ljubljana (Slovenia) from 9-13 June, 2013.
- The ISME Travel Award for Young Scientists, 2012.
- FEMS Young scientist award (as meeting Grant) March 11, 2011.
- HEC Scholarship 2007-2012 by Higher Education Commission of Pakistan, for Doctoral Studies in The Netherlands.
Over the past years, I have successfully won and conducted research projects from the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which fulfilled the required high-standard and feasibility of proposals. From these programs, I have obtained a lot of successful experiences in project planning and implementation.

Areas of Expertise