The College of Science congratulates Dr. Rajeev Azad on receiving the 2021 Early Career Award for Research and Creativity from the Office of the Provost. Each year, this award is given to a University faculty member within their first ten years in a full-time appointment whose research accomplishments have been outstanding and whose scholarly/creative products are considered to have had high impact in the faculty member's discipline and/or on society.
"I am very honored to receive the Early Career Award for Research and Creativity. It is a recognition of the work of many others, including my past and current students, trainees, and collaborators who made this possible," said Dr. Azad, who is an Associate Professor in the UNT Biological Sciences and Mathematics departments. "I am very thankful to the University of North Texas and the funding agencies, the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, for supporting the research in my laboratory."
Dr. Azad's research interests are in the area of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, particularly concerning the development and application of mathematical and computational methods to understand how microorganisms innovate to adapt to changes in environment. The datasets gathered in his lab are used to determine how organisms respond to stress at the molecular and physiological level. In his research group, Dr. Azad and his students/collaborators have developed and applied computational methods and pipelines for gene discovery, alien gene identification, genome comparison, and for understanding genome evolution and differential gene regulation.
"Dr. Azad is highly deserving of this award," said Dr. Jyoti Shah, Chair of the UNT Biological Sciences Department. "We are proud of the work he has done promoting an interdisciplinary research program at UNT, which includes students from Biological Sciences, Mathematics, and Computer Science. He has published over 60 papers in leading journals and his research has been supported by over $4.3M in funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health."
Dr. Azad also received the 2020-2021 Faculty Mentoring Award from the American Society for Microbiology, Texas Branch, the UNT College of Science Faculty Research Excellence Award in 2019, and an Early Career Award from the Mathematical Biosciences Institute in 2016.
Four faculty members in the College of Science received Faculty Excellence Awards this year. "[These awards] speak clearly of our excellence in faculty research and mentoring," said Dean Su Gao. "Each of the awards is well deserved and the result of years of diligent and outstanding work by the faculty members. I offer my heartfelt congratulations to all COS faculty award recipients, and thank all faculty for their unwavering pursuit of excellence in their research and scholarship."
For more information on this year's Salute to Faculty Excellence Award Winners, please visit: https://vpaa.unt.edu/fs/recognition/SFE-award-winners21