My name is Md Sainur Samad and I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO). I completed my PhD from the Department of Microbiology & Immunology, University of Otago, New Zealand. My PhD research, under the supervision of Dr Sergio E. Morales, focused on soil microbial ecology within agroecosystems (specifically pastures) with a focus on nitrogen cycling and N2O emissions.

I completed a Master degree in Applied Biotechnology at Uppsala University, Sweden under the supervision of Prof. Stefan Bertilsson in the area of methanotroph dynamics for controlling methane (CH4) emissions. Afterwards, I worked as a research assistant in the dept. of Ecology & Genetics/Limnology (Micro lab) with multiple projects related to microbial ecology specifically, sample preparation for 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing, metagenomics, and flow cytometry under the supervision of Dr Alexander Eiler, Prof. Eva S. Lindström and Dr Silke Langenheder. This work resulted in a publication (Langenheder et al., 2016) and my support was acknowledged in other works (Peura et al., 2015; Sinclair et al., 2015). Before coming to Sweden, I completed another Master degree in Fisheries Biology & Genetics at Bangladesh Agricultural University, Bangladesh under the supervision of Prof. Md Rafiqul Islam Sarder.

Research skills

Bioinformatics

  • - Programming and statistics: R (full user) and Python (basic)
  • - Qiime & R: 16S amplicon sequence data processing and analysis
  • - MG-RAST & R: metagenomic sequence data processing and analysis
  • - Phylogenetic analysis: command line as well as MEGA7
  • - Cladogram: GraPhlAn

Wetlab
  • - Bacteria/archaea: isolation & identification based on culture dependent and culture independent approaches (dilution-to-extinction)
  • - Nucleic acids: DNA & RNA extraction, purification & quantification; cDNA synthesis; Gel electrophoresis
  • - Protein: purification & quantification; SDS-PAGE; GFP production from E. coli; protein crystallization
  • - Gene: cloning & sequencing; gene expression & identification
  • - Sequencing: sample preparation for next-generation sequencing (NGS)- both amplicon and metagenome
  • - PCR, qPCR, RT-PCR
  • - T-RFLP
  • - Multiple displacement amplification (MDA)
  • - Flow Cytometry: microbial growth & abundance quantification
  • - Gas chromatrography: measurement of N2O, N2, O2, CO2, CH4 and other gases
  • - Water and soil chemistry analysis
  • - Antibiotics: determination of minimal inhibitory concentrations (MICs)

So far, I have been working in different labs that enabled me to build up my research career for which I am thankful. The intention to make this website is to demonstrate and share some of my knowledge and interests. This is an initial stage of my website and more updates are coming. Thanks for visiting!!