The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR and World Agroforestry (ICRAF) joined forces in 2019, leveraging a combined 65 years’ experience in research on the role of forests and trees in solving critical global challenges.
Dr. Khan joined the soil biology group associated with ICRAF East and Central Asia's regional office in Kunming, China. Before joining KIB, he has served for two and half years as assistant-professor at the Institute of Biotechnology and Genetics Engineering (IBGE), University of Agriculture, Peshawar. In September 2009, he was awarded with a PhD scholarship from the Chinese Government and completed his PhD (Biochemistry and molecular biology) in 2012 at the Institute of plant protection, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS), Beijing, China.
He completed his MPhil Microbiology at Quaid-I-Azam University, Islamabad in 2009. There he worked on biodegradation, especially isolation of plastic-degrading fungi and their enzymatic activities. As an MPhil student, he has also worked as an intern at Pak-EPA, Islamabad for one year, under a national internship program.
His current research interests are plastics biodegradation, plant protection, isolation and identification of entomopathogenic, phytopathogenic and mycoparasitic fungi, bio-pesticides engineering, and free-living nitrogen-fixing bacteria.