Mohammed Rahmatullah

Background

Rahmatullah was born on August 31, 1951.

Education

He completed his Secondary School Certificate Examination from Saint Gregory’s High School (Dhaka), Bangladesh in 1967 finishing in First Division. He completed his Higher Secondary Certificate Examination from Dhaka Government College in 1969 in First Division. He obtained his Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Hong Kong in 1982 under the Commonwealth Scholarship program

Career

He has published nearly 500 full length research articles He obtained his Bachelor of Science (Honours) degree in Biochemistry from the University of Dhaka in 1974, securing First Class First position.

He obtained his Master of Science

(Thesis) degree in Biochemistry from the University of Dhaka in 1976 securing Second Class First position (no First Classes were given). He began his career as a Lecturer in the Department of Biochemistry, University of Dhaka (1976-1978).

He was a Commonwealth Research Scholar at the University of Hong Kong (1978-1982) and a Postdoctoral Fellow and later Research Associate at the Department of Biochemistry, Kansas State University (1982-1990). He served as Dean, School of Life Sciences AND Professor and Head of the Department of Biotechnology, Khulna University, Bangladesh from 2000-2002.

He joined the University of Development Alternative (UODA) as Dean, Faculty of Life Sciences in 2002.

He became Pro-Vice Chancellor in 2008. Improved determination methods for urea and citrulline (his two papers on this have been cited 291 and 234 times, respectively)

Discovered a new sub-unit of pyruvate dehydrogenase enzyme

Discovered a novel kinase from Candida lipolytica

Carried out ethnomedicinal surveys on more than 50 Bangladeshi tribes and more than 400 folk medicinal practitioners, yielding the largest data base containing more than 800 medicinal plants

Conducted surveys on functional and famine food plants

Discovered phytoremediating plants that can effectively remove arsenic, tannery waste and textile dyes from soil and water

Discovered novel methods of fish cultivation in small ditches and ponds, to help marginal farmers

Improved methods for clonal propagation of multiple endangered medicinal plant species

Discovered and patented a procedure for extracting material from rice husks that can cure bird flu (caused by H5N1 virus), cure fish, shrimp, and poultry diseases, and a potential for pancreatic cancer treatment

Rahmatullah’s research led to identification of anti-diabetic, analgesic and anti-cancer plants in Bangladesh. Rahmatullah’s research papers have been cited a total of 4,542 times (as of March 14, 2014).

From 2010 to 2013, Rahmatullah was the top publishing author in SCOPUS abstracted scientific journals.

He was named as one of the 64 topmost Bangladeshi researchers of the millennium by Bangladesh Research Development Center.

Achievements

• His research accomplishments include:.