Professor Tahir A. Rizvi obtained his doctorate degree from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, India, 1987. He did his postdoctoral training at the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA and later was appointed as an Assistant Professor at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, Texas, USA in 1992. In 1997, he was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor and in 2001 joined the Department of Microbiology & Immunology, College of Medicine, and Health Sciences (CMHS) at UAE University in Al Ain. In 2006, he was promoted to the rank of Full Professor.

The focus of Prof. Rizvi’s research over the last 3 decades has been to elucidate the basic steps in retroviral replication with the ultimate goal of developing improved retroviral vector systems for human gene therapy. The current focus of research in his laboratory is on how retroviruses package their genomic RNAs into virus particles and what are some of the underlying differences in RNA packaging among different retroviruses. Over the years, these studies have included a number of retroviruses, including HIV, SIV, FIV, MMTV, and MPMV. His current studies on RNA packaging have been published in journals of international repute. Prof. Rizvi has been consistently successful in competing for both intramural and extramural grants, including the prestigious Wellcome Trust grant. In addition to serving as an ad hoc reviewer for several national/international scientific journals, Prof. Rizvi has served as an editorial board member of the leading virology journal, “Retrovirology” and is currently working on the editorial board of “Scientific Reports”.

Most research interests for a scientist

• Regulation of retroviral gene expression, replication, and pathogenesis
• Protein expression, purification, and in vitro virus particle assembly
• Structural basis of retroviral RNA nuclear export, dimerization, and packaging
• Structural biology-RNA secondary structure, RNA-protein interactions, and virus assembly

Specialization

• Virology
• Retrovirology
• Molecular Biology