Prof. (dr.) Mrs. Rubina Lawrence

Biography

Having graduated from Ewing Christian College, Allahabad, Prof. (Dr.) Rubina Lawrence pursued her Masters in Microbiology from Rani Durgavati Viswavidyalaya, Jabalpur and thereafter completed her doctorate degree in Microbiology from Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. She started her research career as Assistant Dairy Chemist/Microbiologist in ICAR funded research project at AAI and then as Assistant Research Officer in ICMR-USAID funded research project at BHU. She entered teaching profession at AAI as Assistant Professor in Microbiology in 1993 and is continuing in the capacity of Professor and Head till date. During her academic career she has been actively involved in establishing a full- fledged department of Microbiology in the University and also in designing the course curriculum for various under graduate, post graduate and doctoral programs offered from the department. As a part of the program requirement she has also been engaged in guiding post graduate and doctoral students in the subject. For more than a decade she has focused her research in the area of Antimicrobial Resistance and has explored the bioactive compounds from natural products as an alternate means to address the problem Prof. Lawrence is able to motivate, mobilise, and guide her students to achieve the highest academic levels possible. She can easily work with others in a professional manner while attempting to achieve a common goal.

Research Interest

After an initial experience as Assistant Dairy Chemist/Microbiologist and Assistant Research Officer, Prof. Rubina Lawrence started her teaching profession in microbiology at SHIATS and has been in this profession for the past 23 years. With an exposure on working on mycotic corneal ulcers and mycoplasma infections in pregnant women and its role on foetal outcome she continued her research in the areas of medical, food and dairy microbiology. Since then she has been working on surveillance of infectious bacterial pathogens, food borne bacterial infection, probiotics and antibiotic resistance in bacteria. After several years of research she understood the importance of antimicrobial resistance and hence continued to explore novel bioactive compounds from medicinal plants and lantibiotics to treat the infection caused by MDR pathogens. During these years she has gained to her credit seven patents in the research on antimicrobial drug discovery. She has also identified several bacterial species with potent lantibiotic produced against the MDR pathogens and the characterization of these lantibiotis is under progress. She has also organized two national conferences on antimicrobial resistance and authored two books on this issue.