Dr. Muhammad Maqsud Hossain is the founding Director of NSU Genome Research Institute (NGRI) and Associate Professor of the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology at North South University. Dr. Hossain completed his PhD in Bioinformatics from University of Nottingham. He is a scientist with over a decade specializing in bioinformatics, genomics, and molecular microbiology, and has gained extensive experience working at Moredun Research Institute, the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b), and A*STAR Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS), where he was a central part of the analysis, interpretation, and writing of genome sequencing projects involving RNA editing pattern in different human diseases such as cancer, and the effect of this biological process in the developmental processes of humans and other animals.

Dr. Hossain and his team recently carried out the first large-scale randomized controlled trial addressing the impact of community mask use on COVID-19 in collaboration with IPA, Yale University, and Stanford University. The team completed serologic testing of over 30,000 samples to determine rates of SARS-CoV-2 seropositivity. Recent interests of his group are bacterial comparative genomics (Sci Rep 10, 14549 (2020)), big data mining and machine learning to improve diagnostics (Funded by GCRF, UK) and treatment selection, SARS-CoV-2 genome sequencing, wastewater-based surveillance of SARS-CoV-2, evolutionary biology, and functional genomics. His team is involved in creation of original analysis tools and comprehensive interpretation of complex biological data enabling challenging research to be undertaken.