Education
PhD (Chloroplast Biotechnology)
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2012
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Imperial College London, UK
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MPhil (Biotechnology)
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2005
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Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad
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BSc (Hons) Agriculture
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2002
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University of Agriculture, Faisalabad
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Employment
Senior Scientist
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2013?present
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NIBGE, Faisalabad
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Assist. Professor (Biotechnology)
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2012?2013
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NIBGE, Faisalabad
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Research Fellow
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2005?2007
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NIBGE, Faisalabad
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Funding
Higher Education Commission (HEC), Pakistan
International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), Italy
Research Activities
- Reduction of erucic acid and glucosinolates in Brassica through CRISPR technology
- Cost effective production of high-value targets in higher plant chloroplasts
- Engineering drought and salt tolerance in crop plants using chloroplast transformation technology

Selected publications (past five years)
- Ahmad, N., and B.L. Nielsen. 2020. Plastid transcriptomics: An important tool for plastid functional genomics. Protein & Peptide Letters:(in press).
- Ahmad, N., S.S.A. Zaidi, and S. Mansoor. 2020. Alternative Routes to Improving Photosynthesis in Field Crops. Trends in Plant Science. 25:958-960.
- Ahmad, N., M.-u. Rahman, Z. Mukhtar, Y. Zafar, and B. Zhang. 2020. A critical look on CRISPR-based genome editing in plants. Journal of Cellular Physiology. 235:666-682.
- Ahmad, N., and B.L. Nielsen. 2020. Plant Organelle DNA Maintenance. Plants. 9: DOI: 10.3390/plants9060683.
- Ahmad, N., M.O. Khan, E. Islam, Z.Y. Wei, L. McAusland, T. Lawson, G.N. Johnson, and P.J. Nixon. 2020. Contrasting responses to stress displayed by tobacco overexpressing an algal plastid terminal oxidase in the chloroplast. Frontiers in Plant Science. 11: DOI: 10.3389/fpls.2020.00501.
- Ahmad, N., M.A. Mehmood, and S. Malik. 2020. Recombinant protein production in microalgae: Emerging trends. Protein & Peptide Letters 27:105-110.
- Farooq, N., M.A. Nawaz, Z. Mukhtar, I. Ali, P. Hundleby, and N. Ahmad. 2019. Investigating the In Vitro Regeneration Potential of Commercial Cultivars of Brassica. Plants. 8:558.
- Morley, S.A., N. Ahmad, and B.L. Nielsen. 2019. Plant organelle genome replication. Plants. 8:358.
- Siddiqui, A., Z. Wei, M. Boehm, and N. Ahmad. 2019. Engineering microalgae through chloroplast transformation to produce high-value industrial products. Biotechnology and Applied Biochemistry. 67:30-40.
- Khan, M.O., M.A. Mehmood, Z. Mukhtar, and N. Ahmad. 2018. Chloroplasts as cellular factories for the cost-effective production of cellulases. Protein & Peptide Letters. 25:129-135.
- Ahmad, N., and Z. Mukhtar. 2017. Genetic manipulations in crops: Challenges and opportunities. Genomics. 109:494-505.
- Ahmad, N., F. Michoux, A.G. Lossl, and P.J. Nixon. 2016. Challenges and perspectives in commercializing plastid transformation technology. Journal of Experimental Botany. 67:5945-5960.
- Ahmad, N., S.J. Burgess, and B.L. Nielsen. 2016. Editorial: Advances in Plastid Biology and Its Applications. Frontiers in Plant Science. 7.1396,DOI: 10.3389/fpls.2016.01396
- Gill, S.S., M.A. Mehmood, N. Ahmad, M. Ibrahim, U. Rashid, S. Ali, and I.A. Nehdi. 2016. Strain selection, growth productivity and biomass characterization of novel microalgae isolated from fresh and wastewaters of upper Punjab, Pakistan. Frontiers in Life Science. 9:190-200.
- Michoux, F., N. Ahmad, Z.Y. Wei, E. Belgio, A. Ruban, and P.J. Nixon. 2016. Testing the role of the N-terminal tail of D1 in the maintenance of photosystem II in tobacco chloroplasts. Frontiers in Plant Science. 7:doi: 10.3389/fpls.2016.00844
- Ahmad, N., and M. Mehmood. 2015. RNA-seq: A powerful tool for cataloguing the transcriptome. Journal of Next Generation Sequencing and Applications. 2: DOI: 10.4172/jngsa.1000e4103.
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