Zeba Islam Seraj is a Bangladeshi scientist known for her research in developing salt-tolerant rice varieties suitable for growth in the coastal areas of Bangladesh. She is currently a Professor at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Dhaka.
Academic career
Seraj studied at the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh obtaining a B.Sc. in 1980. She completed her M.Sc. from the same university in 1982. She obtained her PhD in Biochemistry from University of Glasgow in 1986 and went to University of Liverpool for post-doctoral work in the following year. After completing her post-doc she joined the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Dhaka in 1988. She became an associate professor in 1991 and later a professor in 1997 at the same university. She has been supervising Plant Biotechnology projects funded by foreign and local grants as a Principal Investigator since 1991. She is a visiting researcher with UT Austin since 2013
Research activities
Seraj has established a well-equipped plant biotechnology laboratory at the University of Dhaka. She is a co-principal investigator of a project in the Generation Challenge Program —an initiative to use molecular biology to help boost agricultural production. Seraj has not worked on fine mapping of the major QTLs for salinity tolerance in Pokkali, but rather pursued a traditional rice landrace and application of markers to aid breeding programs for incorporation of salinity tolerance in rice. She also works on developing genetically modified rice varieties with improved salt tolerance suitable for growing in the coastal region of Bangladesh. She was the recipient of the PEER award for using next generation sequencing technologies to find the basis of salt tolerance of a rice landrace endemic to the Bangladesh coast, where University of Texas at Austin served as the host for collaborative work Seraj has been a visiting scientist in , PBGB & CSWS Division, IRRI, USDA research station at Beaumont, Texas, USA and at the Department of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology, University of Texas, Austin, USA as Norman Borlaug Fellow. She has been honored with Visiting researcher status at University of Texas at Austin. She was recently awarded with the Annanya Award, 2017 for her Scientific Research.
Personal life
Zeba was married to Toufiq M Seraj, is a Bangladeshi businessman who was the founder and managing director of Sheltech. They have two daughters.
