#KPTechChat with Dr. Faisal Khan (2nd Session) will be on October 8, 2016

#KPTechChat with Dr. Faisal Khan (2nd Session) will be on October 8, 2016 at 8:00PM!
Dr. Faisal Khan is a biologist and an entrepreneur and works at the intersection of science and innovation. He is the founding Director of the Institute of Integrative Biosciences (IIB), at CECOS University, Peshawar. IIB is a first of its kind cross-disciplinary institute that aims to lead translational and applied research especially in the area of biotechnology in Pakistan. As a biologist, in search of impact on the ground, Dr Khan is leading pioneering efforts in the area of synthetic biology and bio-entrepreneurship in Pakistan. He is leading the Government of KP funded project on Synthetic Biology, which is the first in the global South. Dr Khan is also the founding Director of the newly launched Im|sciences-CECOS Joint Centre for Bioeconomy. Dr Faisal is also the cofounder and CEO at Peshawar 2.0 (P2), a non-profit social enterprise that aims to build the technology transfer pipeline to commercialize science and technology in KP and bring its fruits to the market. P2 is has had significant traction and is catalyzing the development of the startup ecosystem in the capital of KP by mobilizing all stakeholders from the government, private sector, development sector and academia. P2 has brought world-class events like TEDx and Startup Weekend to KP and has created new flagship events like the Digital Youth Summit and the Art+Tech Festival and runs NXTGEN - trainings in 21st century skills - and Revolt – an incubation programme tailored for Pakistani startups. Dr Khan is a graduate of the University of Oxford, where he completed his doctoral studies at the intersection of Cell Biology and Systems Biology as a member of the Oxford Protein Informatics Group. His project involved integrating biological data and using machine-learning techniques to predict genes, which function in specific biological processes including cancer. His work unraveled 26 novel genes with a role in mitosis and potentially cancer. His research group at IIB is now using the same methods to also investigate important infectious diseases in Pakistan, including Dengue Fever, Hepatitis, Malaria and Tuberculosis. Prior to IIB, Faisal taught Bioinformatics, Industrial Biotechnology and Human Molecular Genetics and a newly developed course on Systems Biology at the University of Peshawar. He has also held different positions at the University of Exeter (UK), NUST (Pakistan) and LUMS (Pakistan). During the course of his DPhil, Faisal was also a SIP scholar at the Saïd Business School where he read Strategy and Innovation. Faisal also has an MSc in Integrative Bioscience from the University of Oxford with two dissertations in Cell Biology and Structural Bioinformatics, and a BS in Biotechnology from the University of Peshawar. Throughout his career Faisal has won numerous awards and scholarships including the HEC overseas scholarship, the Oxford-Noon Award and the St. Anne’s College Domus Award. As an entrepreneur, Faisal was selected amongst Europe’s 40 Biotech Leaders of the Future by Novartis in 2009 and his startup won his team the CUE Grand Finale, the largest business plan competition at the University of Cambridge, in 2011. Dr Khan is also a board member of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Information Technology Board, the KP Directorate of Science and Technology Advisory Committee and the KP Higher Education Research Endowment Fund and is the focal person of the Ministry of Climate Change for Synthetic Biology at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.