Dr. Babar Hussain

Dr. Babar Hussain has been working in the capacity of Assistant Professor at the Department of Biotechnology, Faculty of Science and Technology since September 2021. He completed his MS in Plant Breeding and Genetics from the University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, in 2013. He earned his PhD in Molecular Biology, Genetics and Bioengineering from Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey, during 2014-2018. He worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at Sabanci University from 2018-2019, after working there as a Teaching and Research Assistant from 2014-2018. After teaching at the University of Central Punjab-Lahore for a year, he returned to Turkey for his second postdoctoral studies at Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey, in September 2020.

He worked with Prof. Dr. Levent Ozturk at Sabanci University, Turkey, for his first postdoctorateon Nutrigenomics (nutrient and metal transport in wheat under salt stress and other climate change conditions) . He worked with Dr. Seckin Eroglu at Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey, for his second postdoctorate to study Iron biofortification, uptake, and transport in tomato and Arabidopsis thaliana. He conducted more than a hundred experiments on germination, seedling and reproductive stages of T-DNA insertion mutants of these plants.

His research interests include crop improvement through a combination of biotechnology, bioinformatics, and genomic tools. He uses transgenic plants, nanotechnology, and T-DNA insertion mutants for developing climate-resilient and bio-fortified plants. Biotechnology, Genomics, Bioinformatics, and Molecular Breeding for gene discovery and development of climate-smart and bio-fortified crops. He and his students aim to identify novel genes, QTL, and SNPs in germplasm/populations for crop improvement. They work mainly on bread and durum wheat but also explore chickpeas, Arabidopsis thaliana, cotton, tomatoes, and soybeans. His primary focus is understanding the molecular mechanisms of salt tolerance and Iron fortification in plants through OMICs, NGS, transgenic plants, drought and heat stress, and Zn bio-fortification. Dr. Babar has authored/ co-authored more than fifteen journal articles, three book chapters, and six invited talks/presentations. He has been serving as an editorial board member and reviewer for several leading journals.

Dr. Babar teaches Biotechnology, Nanotechnology, and Genetics-related courses at undergraduate and postgraduate level.