Profile

Professor Md. Nazrul Islam (Ph.D.) was born and brought up in Mohish Mara, Burichong in Cumilla District of Bangladesh. He is the third child of Late Md Sekander Ali and Late Royjener Nesa. He attended elementary school at Mohish Mara Primary School. He went to Barashar High School for few years for his higher secondary level education and then completed his S.S.C. in 1979 from Burichong Ananda Pilot Government High School. He then completed his H.S.C in 1981 from Cumilla Victoria Government College. He obtained B.Sc. Ag. (Hons.) in 1990 from Putakhali Krishi College (PKC now PSTU) which was then under BAU. He started his carrier as a Manager in an urban pest control farm called “Safe Way Pest Control” in Bonani, Dhaka. In first September 1992, he was employed as a Scientific Officer (SO) at the Agronomy Division in the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), Gazipur. He completed M.S. in Agronomy from BAU in 1998 through deputation from BARI with Ford Foundation Scholarship. After completion of his study, he joined in the same Division at BARI and remained engaged in departmental activities as well as in the IPM-CRSP project funded by USAID. With funding from that project, he got the scholarship to pursue PhD at the University of the Philippines at Los Banos (UPLB), where he obtained his PhD degree in Agronomy specializing in Weed Science along with Plant Pathology and Entomology as cognates in 2004. After returning from the UPLB he again joined the Agronomy Division of BARI at Gazipur. In 2005, he was promoted to SSO and was given the responsibility as Drawing and Disbursement Officer and the station in charge of Citrus Research Station, Jaintapur, a substation of BARI. In 2006, he was transferred to the On-farm Research Division (OFRD) of BARI at Comilla, where he conducted several experiments at the Research Station and in farmers’ fields every year. As part of his job duty, he had to guide and supervise the Senior Scientific Officers, Scientific Officers, and administrative staffs. He also gained extra managerial capacity and experience while he took the responsibility of establishing and successfully completing a new Agricultural Research Station (ARS) in ten hectares of land in Cumilla. It took about four years to complete the establishment of the station and, during this time, he had to handle different projects like establishment of the Regional Horticultural Research Station, Spices Research Sub Station, Oil seed Research Strengthening, Integrated Crop Management (ICM), Strengthening of Tuber Crops Research, etc. During this period, he published a booklet on “Potato Seed Production through Improved Technique”. As a Drawing and Disbursement Officer of the station, he also handled about 65 office staff and managed the financial and procurement activities. He also gained experience as a trainer as well as organizer of different training courses for the officers of BARI, Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), Farmers and NGO’s. In addition, one of his prime duties was to organize the research and extension programs, planning & evaluation, and seminars and workshops. At the same time, he also worked as a Co-Investigator of the Rice-Maize project funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) at Cumilla. In 2011, he joined as a Cropping System Scientist/Specialist for the USAID-funded IRRI-CIMMYT-World Fish joint project at Barisal. In the same year in September he was employed as an Associate Professor by the Department of Agronomy and Haor Agriculture at the Sylhet Agricultural University (SAU). In September 2015, he became a Professor in the same department. During this tenure, he supervised research of more than twenty post graduate students and one PhD Fellow. So far, he has published about 40 scientific articles in national and international Journals. He has also managed and coordinated a few national and international projects funded by MOST, UGC, BANBEIS, SAURES, etc. From the funding of BANBEIS, he established a Citrus Germplasms Center in the hillocks of SAU. Presently, he is handling a BAS-USDA funded project “Collection and Characterization of Local Rice Cultivars of Northeast Region of Bangladesh (Sylhet) with Respect to Morphological and Molecular Characteristics”. Aside from this, he is also supervising additional nine MS level students of same department.