Dr Raza graduated from the University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Pakistan, as a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine with summa cum laude and was awarded a Gold Medal. He completed his PhD at CSIRO and the University of Queensland in 2017 and joined the Centre for Animal Science within Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovations as a Postdoctoral Research Scientist in 2018. Before being appointed at the Centre for Animal Science, QAAFI, Dr Raza was a lecturer at the Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan, for four years. He is a passionate animal scientist with a major interest in infectious diseases of animals, primarily Parasitic and Bacterial infections. Dr Raza is determined to develop international collaborations for innovative scientific research in the field of Animal Science. His primary areas of interest are investigating means of controlling worms and ticks by developing vaccines and diagnostic tests, studying drug resistance, drug discovery, and discovering biomarkers for disease resistance.
Control of cattle ectoparasites
I am working on developing more efficient and practically feasible methods for assessing tick and buffalo fly (BF) numbers to facilitate rapid and accurate phenotyping for susceptibility. The project also aims to develop a set of standards for commercial scoring of BF, tick, and BF lesions and identifying new biomarkers and/or genomic breeding tools that facilitate the selection of cattle resistant to ticks, BF and BF lesions.
Investigating means to control intestinal parasites
1. Exploring biochemical and molecular aspects of host-parasite interactions 2. Identifying natural products or synthetic chemicals with anthelmintic activity 3. Developing assays useful for detecting anthelmintic resistance in nematodes of veterinary and human importance
Biofilm producing microorganisms
Studying antibiotic resistance and host immune response to biofilm-producing bacteria