Mubarak Hussain Syed, a Kashmir born neuroscientist in USA has received the prestigious Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award from National Science Foundation (NSF).
The CAREER award supports early career scientists who serve as academic role models and lead scientific advances in their organization.
Syed, an assistant professor of Biology at The University of New Mexico (UNM), will receive $1.8 million over the next five years for his project “Mechanisms regulating neural identity, connectivity and function- From stem cells to circuits.”
As per the UNM newsroom statement, the project will allow Syed to pursue his passions of understanding brain development and function, mentoring students, and science outreach.
“Over the years, I have gained experience in developmental neuroscience, and now we are aiming to establish a link between developmental mechanisms and adult behaviors using Drosophila, or fruit flies, as a model system,” he said in the statement.
“I have been working with fruit flies for over a decade. They are incredible creatures and have led to many fundamental discoveries in many fields, including the development, genetics, and neuroscience,” he said.
Syed, who is from Budgam, has been a student at the University of Kashmir, before moving for further studies abroad. Professor Khursheed Andrabi said Syed has been a dear student with whom he also shares a personal bonding. “He has been a bright and gentle student, more like a son to me. He visits Kashmir every year and without fail visits our department. Like any true Kashmiri, he meets new students and delivers talks on the recent developments in his field of research.”
Andrabi added Syed has always been passionate about spreading scientific temper and worked to mentor budding scientists.Syed is the founder of several such organizations the Valley.
“I am very passionate about science outreach and reaching out to the local schools by visiting the classroom. I have been doing these activities for some time now. I am from Kashmir, and to help/mentor students back home, I started an organization JKScientists when I was a graduate student. It is a public organization now, and thanks to the young generation of students, it is moving forward,” Syed said in the statement.
“I aim to recruit undergraduate researchers to carry out experiments in a lab-based neurogenetics lab course through this award. This neuroscience course will provide a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) NeuroCURE to a diverse group of learners, thus allowing them to better identify themselves as scientists with the capacity to engage in a critical field of study actively. This course will be the first neuroscience lab course offered to undergraduates at the UNM Biology,” the University website quotes him as saying.
