Dr. Shah Rukh Abbas PhD in Biotechnology (University of Cambridge, UK)

I am Dr. Shah Rukh Abbas and currently serving as Assistant Professor at Atta ur Rahman School of Applied Biosciences (ASAB), National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Islamabad, Pakistan since September 2014 and a Principal Investigator (PI) of Biosensors and Therapeutics Lab at School of Interdisciplinary Engineering and Sciences, NUST, Islamabad, Pakistan. The later department (SINES) is a new interdisciplinary school (founded in 2020) whose developmental journey I am involved in since the very beginning as one of the core committee members due to my interdisciplinary research profile and collaborative portfolio with a potential of commercialization. Below is a brief account of my interdisciplinary research journey and happy to talk to potential collaborators/employers.

I have done my BS Hons in Biotechnology (2004-08) from the University of Peshawar, Pakistan straight after which I have done my Ph.D. in Biotechnology from the University of Cambridge (April 2010-Aug 2014) under the supervision of Prof. E.A.H. Hall at the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology and since then I joined NUST. During my Ph.D., I worked with i) chemists and nanotechnologists to make and characterize nano and micron-sized gas core particles to be used as Ultrasound Contrast Agents (USCAs), ii) engineers and physicists to acoustically characterize them both numerically and practically, iii) clinicians to check its clinical US imaging and iv) with biotechnologists to decorate them with genetically engineered proteins for targeted imaging. This multi-disciplinary research project taught me a plethora of techniques and scientific literature covering a wide range of subjects spanning chemical sciences, molecular biology, cell (bacterial) culturing, and some ultrasound physics, and I was thus trained as an interdisciplinary researcher at Cambridge. Besides academia, I was a member of many student-based societies to organize and take part in extracurricular activities important being the Cambridge University Entrepreneurial (CUE) society where I managed to grab the CUE's major prize for commercial start up under both social enterprise and technology enterprise theme as mentioned in my CV. This four years' experience at Cambridge gave me the necessary long-term training for both interdisciplinary research and commercialization.

After my Ph.D., I continued to work on interdisciplinary research when joining ASAB, NUST in Sept 2014. I have so far supervised 17 BS (13 graduated) and 19 MS (13 graduated) and 3 Ph.D. students (ongoing). All these students had interdisciplinary projects with a research focus around the use of natural and synthetic biomaterials in developing tailor-synthesized nano and micron-scale colloidal constructs to develop advanced imaging (US imaging, fluorescent, and MRI) and drug delivery agents with the promise to improve healthcare. We are also working on developing nano biosensors for various infectious and non-infectious diseases and have developed a prototype for TB biosensor, Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) an E-nose for detecting HCC via the breath. Besides healthcare, our nanomaterials are also being used by our collaborators for environmental applications such as wastewater treatment (Dye adsorption) and bioremediation applications using silica nanoparticles. We are also utilizing our nanotechnology in cosmetics to make many nano biocosmetic agents. All these projects involved contributions from our NUST collaborators (RIMMS, SEECS, SCME, SMME, and IESE), local collaborators (Shifa and PIMS hospitals), National collaborators (NILOP, LUMS, Lahore and KMU, Peshawar), and international collaborators (Uni of Cambridge, Uni of Oxford, Swansea University and University of California (Irvine), NC University, Chapel Hill, US).

I along with my collaborators have applied for many national and international consortium grants (GCF, GCRF, One-Health) which were shortlisted for finals as well. Though we did not win all of them however it gave us the best team with a common goal to work together.

Our lab work has been published in international journals and few have been in consideration in high IF journals as well. I and my students have presented our research work at many national and international conferences both orally and in posters. We also managed to file 7 IPs, 3 of which have been awarded. IPs awarded for the TB project have also been licensed to a pharmaceutical company for PKR 14 M. We have also won many national grants from the Higher Education Commission (HEC) and Pakistan Science Foundation (PSF) of the worth of PKR 6M. This is not just adding in the knowledge pool of multidisciplinary and training workforce of students to work in a multidisciplinary project but also has the potential to strongly impact the economy of the country by commercializing the translational products of the research, that is, the diagnostic devices.

Apart from my academic career, I have also performed administrative roles assigned by my current institute NUST. I have remained a Local purchase committee member for 5 years (2015-2020) and president of LPC (2020-21). This role taught me PPRA procurement rules and regulations involved in the local purchase, tender for equipment initiation, and processing and importing lab items. During the development of SINES in its initial stages, and running national and industrial grants as PI; I have been involved in procurements of lab equipment and also furniture and consumables in bulk. It was indeed an exciting yet challenging role to not only design lab keeping in mind its 15-20X years down the line utility and to procure items to make it fully functional. Our 'biosensors and therapeutics lab' is one of the very first ones and the only wet lab which became functional last year.

I have also designed, initiated, and currently teaching new courses at PG and UG levels (mentioned in my CV) and hence am aware of the working paper formulation. I was involved as a team from ASAB in many working papers formulations to start new degree programs as well.

I believe that my professional and research skills are well-suited to work with a prestigious international forum to play my part in excelling in science and its translational applications globally. It's my passion to do interdisciplinary research and work in teams to make commercial and translational products and this is evident from my research portfolio.

It will indeed be an honor for me to be a part of your team.

Yours faithfully,

Shah Rukh Abbas