Dr. Tariq Mahmood

Ph.D (Massey University, NEW ZEALAND)
Assistant Professor
Email: mtariqmahmood@cuvas.edu.pk

Work Experience

  • Prior to moving to New Zealand for Post-graduate studies, worked for Forestry & Wildlife Department (Pakistan) for a period of one year.
  • Seven years laboratory work experience within both PC1 and PC2 facilities (2008-2015), while supervising Biochemistry of Cells, and Biology of Cells classes for various professional disciplines at Inst. of Fundamental Sciences, Massey University.
  • “Taxonomic and Ethno botanical studies of some species of Matricaria in Pakistan” I International Symposium on Chamomile Research, Development & Production, 7-10 June 2006. Presov (Slovak Republic).
  • Effects of Different Preservation Techniques on External Body Parameters of Colisa fasciata”. 25th Pakistan Congress of Zoology (International), 2005. Sind Agricultural University, Tandojam, Sind (Pakistan).

Qualifications

  • Ph.D. (Sci.) (2015)– Massey University, New Zealand

    Dissertation Title: Avian Raptor Evolution (https://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/7198)

    Summary: My study encompasses both Macro- and Micro-evolution with the help of mitogenomic data. I built a relational database (an NCBI pipeline) of the online available sequence data for avian ‘raptors’. My thesis focused on unraveling their inter-ordinal relationships as well as the overall position on the avian tree. The last aspect of my study was to look into the population genetics of a common owl species.

    Dissertation Co-Chairs: Dist. Prof. David Penny, Prof. Michael P. Wink, Assoc. Prof. Barbara Holland, Dr. Gillian Gibb

  • Post Grad. Cert. in Computational Biology - (2008-2009) - Massey University, New Zealand

    Research Reports: (1) Phylogenetic studies on Raptors of Pakistan. (2) Reanalysis of Tree of Life data for birds. (3) Raptors Data Manager (A software application based on VB .NET and SQL server)

  • M.Sc. Zoology (2004-2005), Bahauddin Zakariya University, Pakistan

    Dissertation: Comparison of Growth performance and Body composition parameters of some Fish species from Kallar Kahar Lake (Chakwal, Pakistan) and Bismillah Fish Farm (Muzaffar Garh, Pakistan).

  • B. Sc. Hons. Zoology (2001-2004) - Bahauddin Zakariya University, Pakistan Research Report: Prevalence of Diabetes mellitus in relation to Age, gender, prognostic changes and associated complications, among the population of Multan

RESEARCH INTERESTS

  • Evolutionary Biology
  • Phylogenetics
  • Biological Anthropology
  • Quantitative and Population Genetics
  • Molecular Ecology
  • Ethno-botany
  • Zoology

 

PUBLICATIONS

  • Mahmood, MT., Mclenachan, PA, Gibb, GC, and Penny, D. 2014. Phylogenetic Position of Avian Nocturnal and Diurnal Raptors. Genome Biology and Evolution. 6(2) 326-332
  • Mahmood, MT., McLenachan PA, Zhong B, Wink M, and Penny, D. Four new mitochondrial genomes support the distinctiveness of three separate groups of raptors.Genome Biology and Evolution (Submitted)
  • Mahmood, MT., Truglio, M, and Penny, D. RaptorBase: a database of raptors’ nucleotide sequences. BMC Bioinformatics. (Under review)
  • Mahmood, MT., Mclenachan, PA, Gibb, GC, and Penny, D. (in prep). Genetic diversity of Spotted Owlet (Athene brama) from the agro-ecosystem of Punjab, Pakistan.
  • District Wildlife Officer

CONFERENCES

  • “How often did raptor ecology evolve?” Raptor Research Foundation Annual Meeting. Sept. 24th-28th, 2014. Corpus Christie, Texas (USA).
  • “Phylogenetic position of avian nocturnal and diurnal raptors”. 17th Evolutionary Biology Meeting at Marseilles, Sept. 17th-20th, 2013. (France).
  • “Taxonomic and Ethno botanical studies of some species of Matricaria in Pakistan” I International Symposium on Chamomile Research, Development & Production, 7-10 June 2006. Presov (Slovak Republic).
  • Effects of Different Preservation Techniques on External Body Parameters of Colisa fasciata”. 25th Pakistan Congress of Zoology (International), 2005. Sind Agricultural University, Tandojam, Sind (Pakistan).

HONOURS AND AWARDS

  • Higher Education Commission, Pakistan Scholarship for Doctoral Studies in New Zealand (2008-2014).
  • Claude McCarthy Fellowship – Universities NZ (2014).
  • IFS, Massey University, Travel award (2013)

TECHNICAL SKILLS

  • Background in quantitative genetics and Zoology with a keen focus on Ornithology integrating both field based and molecular approaches.
  • DNA Sequencing
    • High throughput /Next Generation Sequencing (Illumina MiSeq platform, mapping, De novo assembly, and alignments)
    • Traditional Sanger Sequencing
  • Molecular biology skills including qPCR, RT-PCR.
  • Microscopy, biochemical and cellular biology techniques.
  • Basic understanding of acoustic communication apparatus, and environmental data loggers.
  • PAUP*, Mr Bayes, RAxML, Garli, NGS data analysis, Geneious Pro, DnaSP 5.10 (DNA Polymorphism), MEGA, PhyLIP, CLC genomics workbench
  • Development of relational databases/MySQL databases.
  • PBS scripting on servers using Unix/Linux environment.
  • Programming languages: BioPerl and Python.
  • Familiarity with, and user of CIPRES science gateway.