Afia Maheda Prema completed her BSc. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet, Bangladesh. After that in January 2021, she got admission into East Tennessee State University, Tennessee, USA in the Biological Sciences MSc. program with a prestigious scholarship(full-funded) for a Graduate Teaching Assistantship. At ETSU, she worked as a graduate teaching assistant for two and a half years. Moreover, she achieved level 1(High Contact) in the US University-based oral proficiency test, so she was given full responsibility for grading, lab instructions, and classroom lectures. She taught undergraduate biology students on various topics such as neuro-biochemistry, organismal biology, protein chemistry, bioinformatics, microscopy, etc.
She also worked as a Graduate Research Assistant in the Biological Sciences Department. Her whole thesis was conducted under the Centre of Excellence for Inflammation, Infectious Disease and Immunity, Quillen College of Medicine, ETSU. During her thesis work and graduate program studies, she gathered expertise in cloning and recombinant plasmid construction, mutagenic primer designing using OLIGO software, both atypical and conventional PCR-Site-Directed mutagenesis with the unique mutant generation, CHROMAS, DNA isolation, XL1B, DH5α, BL21 competent cell transformation, and cell culture, agarose DNA gel electrophoresis, SDS-PAGE, BCA assay, Ni-NTA column chromatography mediated protein isolation and dialysis, surface plasmon resonance assay and Kinetic characterization of membrane protein binding interactions using ForteBio Octet BLI system & SPR, Western blotting, ELISA, protein quantification, flow cytometry and cell adhesion assay, 3D Protein structure homology modeling, DNA quantification by real-time PCR, biomolecule separation by HPLC, pathogenicity island analysis with Artemis, SPSS and statistical data analysis.
Afia´s master´s thesis focused on Mapping the binding site within human Integrin aDb2 for carboxyethyl (CEP)-modified proteins which aimed to identify the specific amino acids of integrin aDb2 that participate in binding to 2-(ω-carboxyethyl) pyrrole or CEP, a ligand at inflammatory sites. Investigation of this interaction is a major step toward treatment and antibody development with the potential to prevent human chronic inflammation-mediated diseases. Her thesis work is a combination of molecular biology, immunology, microbiology, protein biochemistry, bioinformatics, and biostatistics.
During her graduate studies, she conducted a semester-long project under the Department of English, at ETSU where she supervised students of diverse nationalities about the history, culture, and traditions of Bangladesh. Respective students completed the project successfully under Afia´s supervision.
In her undergrad, she was awarded for placing third position in the National Biochemistry Olympiad (Bio Park Poster category) arranged by Dhaka University for two consecutive years where she presented her innovative ideas and thoughts on genetic engineering with the aim of chronic disease prevention.
Currently, she is working on nanotechnology topics, however, she has an immense interest in working on human chronic diseases as well.
Address
Level: 4
Kha-224 Merul Badda
Dhaka 1212. Bangladesh