Biotechnology; bioengineering; chemical engineering; metabolic engineering; systems biology; synthetic biology; computational biology; bioinformatics; cheminformatics; functional genomics; mathematical modeling; optimization; anaerobic microbiology; and environmental microbiology.

Trained as a bioengineer, Dr. Islam’s research focuses on the design, re-design, and implementation of biological processes to tackle important societal challenges, including the bioproduction of ‘green’ petrochemicals from gases, mitigating nutrient pollution from the environment, and developing novel chemotherapies for cancer treatment. He uses both computational and experimental approaches to engineer ‘cellular metabolism,’ namely bioprocesses, to achieve the research objectives.