Prof. Ahmad Abdullah Azad

Prof. Azad was born on November 17, 1945 in what is now Bangladesh.

He obtained a BSc (Hons. First Class) in Biochemistry (1967) and a MSc (First Class) in Biochemistry (1968), both from the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. He obtained a PhD in Molecular Biology/Biochemistry (1973) and completed two years post-doctoral work at the University of Toronto, Canada. He obtained excellence awards and scholarships throughout his studies.

He has over 38 years of varied research and research management experience in medical biotechnology and in the commercialization of research. After five years at the Australian National University, he spent 19 years at the CSIRO in Melbourne where he was Chief Research Scientist and Program Manager, Molecular Virology. He then spent five years as Director of Research and Professor of Medical Biotechnology at the University of Cape Town (South Africa) where he remains an Honorary Professor. Professor Azad’s main research interest has been in the development of drugs and vaccines against viruses that cause immunodeficiency (HIV and IBDV). He has attracted over $10 million for this research from external grants. He was awarded the CSIRO Chairman’s Gold Medal for Exceptional Achievement (1997) for the successful development and commercialization of a recombinant subunit vaccine against IBDV.

Prof. Azad’s main interests at the moment include capacity development in LDCs and the establishment of a drug discovery and development network in the Islamic world. He is currently a Member, Council of Scientific Advisers, ICGEB (Trieste); Director, Board of the Medical Research Council of South Africa; and TWAS Research Professor for LDC at BRAC University in Bangladesh. He holds many other advisory positions and honorary professorships in South Asia, OIC member countries, South Africa and Australia.

Prof. Azad has over 130 articles in peer-reviewed international journals, has been an invited speaker at over 50 international conferences, and has been granted seven patents worldwide.

Prof. Azad was elected as a Fellow of the IAS in 2000.