University of Tulsa Associate Professor of Biological Science Akhtar Ali has been granted a Fulbright U.S. Scholar award to advance his research in virus-borne illnesses in Japan. Ali is among 500 university faculty, administrators, professionals and scholars from all over the United States to receive a Fulbright and pursue novel research in more than 125 countries.
Ali joined the Department of Biological Science in 2007 after working as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation in Oklahoma. He also conducted postdoctoral research at the Division of Plant Industry, CSIRO in Adelaide, Australia, and the National Research Centre for Tohoku Region in Morioka, Japan. Ali holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in plant pathology from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Agricultural University, Peshawar, Pakistan, and a doctorate in plant virology from the University of Adelaide. He has presented more than 70 conference lectures around the globe and received 14 external grants from the United States Department of Agriculture and other members of the plant and food research industry.
More than 30 undergraduates and eight graduate students regularly have conducted research in Ali’s lab where he also serves as a Tulsa Undergraduate Research Challenge (TURC) mentor. Research for his Fulbright U.S. Scholar award begins in the fall of 2017 at the University of Okayama, Japan.