Fahrul Zaman Huyop

Biography

I graduated from MARA Institute of Technology (now UiTM) in 1993 with Diploma in Microbiology.  Then, I pursue my Bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology at the University of Wales, College of Cardiff in United Kingdom under MARA Scholarship.  I went back to Malaysia in 1995 and was offered a job as a University tutor at the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM).  I was awarded a University scholarship to continue my education for MSc. in Environmental Biotechnology at the University of the West of England, Bristol, United Kingdom from 1995-1996.  I was promoted as a lecturer right after my MSc. under Faculty of Science, Chemistry Department.  I started my PhD in 1998 and completed in 2001, under supervision -Dr. RA Cooper, University of Leicester, United Kingdom.  My PhD work involved microbiological research in pollutant degradation.  The project was to further characterize Rhizobial dehalogenases whether a single regulatory gene (dehR gene) controls all the 3 dehalogenases – DehD, E and L.  I returned back to UTM in January 2002 and started my full time career as a lecturer.  I was promoted as a Senior lecturer four years after, and Associate Professor in 2009.  I did a lot of research related to microbial dehalogenases and supervised under-graduate and post-graduate project students under Malaysian government funding.  The interest at the moment is to study the properties of dehalogenases isolated from extreme conditions.  My PhD students are currently research on structural & functions of well-established dehalogenases isolated from Rhizobial system using Bioinformatics as a tool.  Apart from that, is to investigate the application of dehalogenases in the plant system for herbicide’s tolerance.

Research Interest

Microbiology & Biochemistry (Molecular Biology of Pollutant Degradation/Plant Biotechnology)