Principal Investigator

Dr. Md. Abu Reza is a renowned Bangladeshi scientist known for developing the first ever database on the snakes in Bangladesh. It is known as “ISOB: A Database of Indigenous Snake Species of Bangladesh with respective known venom composition”. He is both charismatic and passionate towards teaching and is currently serving as a Professor at the Department of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Rajshahi. Dr. Reza completed his Bachelor’s and Master’s from the University of Rajshahi under the Department of Botany. In 2006, he received his PhD on Biological Sciences from the National University of Singapore followed by a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the same institute.

Before his PhD, Dr. Reza was recruited as a forest officer at the Forest Department of Bangladesh and worked there for almost 2 years. In 1998, he joined as a lecturer in Department of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Rajshahi. Dr. Reza is an expert in the field of Molecular Biology, Bioinformatics, Biochemistry, Cancer and Apoptotic Biology. He is one of the pioneers in snake venom research in Bangladesh and has been associated with this field for more than 18 years.

His fascination towards venom toxicity and composition motivated home to pursue a PhD in the respective field. He was awarded “Student of The Year” award from the National University of Singapore despite coming from a Botany background. Apart from this, he is also associated with several research projects like, non-thermal plasma application in biotechnology, protein characterization and gene Expression, cancer biology, novel drug molecule designing etc.

Dr. Reza received many prestigious fellowship proposals from The Institut Pasteur, MIT etc. And yet, he decided to return to his home country and serve his students.