Sarwar Azam

Biography

Education and training: Sarwar Azam completed M Tech degree in Computational and Systems Biology from Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2009. After working for a short period at National Institute of Plant Genome Research (NIPGR), he joined International Crop Research Center for the Semi-Arid Tropic (ICRISAT) in 2010 as Visiting Scientist (Bioinformatics). Later he continued as a Special Project Scientist at ICRISAT in the field of computational genomics. He joined NIAB in November 2013. Research experience and interests: Sarwar’s research experience spans genetics, genomics and computational biology. His major contribution has been in the field of genome sequencing where he generated reference sequences for two plant genomes i.e., Cicer arietinum (chickpea) and Cajanus cajan (pigeonpea) and two bacterial genomes i.e., Sphingopyxis wildii and Sphingobium fuliginis. He has also contributed in finding quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for different traits in chickpea and identified candidate genes for various traits by analysing RNAseq data in different species. He also developed pipeline to analyse NGS data for SNPs identification (ISMU), synteny visualisation (GCT) and few other databases. Currently, his research interest includes genome sequencing, transcriptomics and genome-wide association studies (GWAS) to improve the genetic and productive efficiency of livestock. He is also keen to develop fundamental knowledge and bioinformatics tools to facilitate genomic studies in animals. Selected awards, honours and fellowships: Certificate of Appreciation for the outstanding contribution in the area of Functional Genomics and Bioinformatics as part of Bioclues Innovation, Research and Development (BIRD) award, 2011 Exceptional Scientific Article in a High Impact Journal Award, ICRISAT, 2011 CSIR – UGC NET examination in Life sciences held in June 2008, December 2008 & June 2009 DBT fellowship 2007-2009 for M.Tech. course BCIL Fellowship for BITP from DBT, Govt. of India, 2006

Research Interest

Genome sequencing, Gene expression, Genome-wide association studies (GWAS), Comparative genomics, Evolutionary biology, Bioinformatic tools & Pipeline development