Vice-Chancellor, University of Peshawar, Prof Dr Muhammad Idrees has been elected as a fellow of the prestigious Pakistan Academy of Sciences.
Vice-Chancellor, University of Peshawar, Prof Dr Muhammad Idrees has been elected as a fellow of the prestigious Pakistan Academy of Sciences, as an acknowledgment of his meritorious services to the field of Virology over the last two decades.
Founded in 1953, the Pakistan Academy of Sciences is a non-governmental and non-political supreme scientific body of distinguished scientists in the country. The government of Pakistan has given the consultative and advisory status to the Academy “on all problems relating to the development of scientific efforts in the country”. At present, there are 83 Fellows, and 34 Foreign Fellows of the Academy.
Expressing his feelings on the election, Prof Idrees said that he is thankful to his students, colleagues, and staff members who have worked with him in his teaching and research journey over the last two decades.
It is worth noting that as recognition of his tremendous contribution in the field of Molecular Virology, The Royal College of Pathologists London-UK awarded him with Fellowship of the College (FRCPath) in 2015 which is a unique honour for a Pakistani scientist.
Dr Idrees is also a recipient of “TWAS Best Young Scientist of the Year-2009” award, the PAS Gold Medal 2016 in the scientific discipline “Emerging Technologies’ by the Pakistan Academy of Sciences, and “Research Productivity Awards” for his excellent performance in the field of Molecular Biology.
The learned doctor has also been awarded a certificate of appreciation for excellent lab support in the detection of dengue fever cases during the outbreak in the year 2011 and awarded a shield for his excellent performance in ‘Lab Services in Case Detection for Dengue Fever’ by World Health Organisation.
Prof Dr Muhammad Idrees started his career as a Research Officer at the Centre for Applied Molecular Biology (CAMB), where he established a state-of-the-art Molecular-based Diagnostic Lab for the detection of infectious diseases to facilitate the public with reliable, accurate, rapid, and more economical diagnostic services for widespread contagious infections and genetic diseases.
Dr Idrees current scientific and clinical interests encompass basic and applied research utilising modern molecular based techniques. Recently he has developed an excellent teaching and research programme (BS, MPhil & PhD) in Applied Molecular Biology & Forensic Sciences for which, he has been internationally acclaimed as an eminent Molecular Biologist.
He is the first in the country to carry out pioneering studies on viral hepatitis and he along with his team has been supervising the study of the genome variations in hepatitis viruses and Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Dr Idrees and his team focused on providing affordable health care to the community.
Dr Idrees’s research group worked hard to produce low-cost Molecular Diagnostic Kits for the detection of HBV, HCV, tuberculosis, dengue, and HCV Genotyping. This helped to overcome the inherent constraints of practicing modern molecular tools for disease diagnosis and encouraged/contributed to the indigenous technologies around molecular diagnostics.
He has been the principal/co-principal investigator of several research projects funded by national and international funding agencies, namely Ministry of Science & Technology, HEC, EMRO-WHO and Pak-USA.
Prof Muhammad Idrees remained the Vice-Chancellor of Hazara University from 2016 to 2019 and is at present serving as the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Peshawar since December 2020.
Originally published at The Nation