A Bangladeshi computer scientist has been awarded in the United States for developing software and theoretical underpinning needed to help convert algae into biofuel.

Dr Md Tamjidul Hoque, an assistant professor of the Department of Computer Science, the University of New Orleans (UNO), USA, has been awarded $141,453 by the Louisiana Board of Regents Industrial Ties Research Subprogram for developing the software tools and theoretical underpinning needed to help convert algae into biofuel.

The grant also has a three-year institutional match of $36,720, according to a message received here.

Dr Hoque said algae are found to have good potential for providing biofuel at a higher rate compared to any other plants.

‘Algae can be developed as an excellent microbial cell factory that can harvest solar energy and convert atmospheric carbon-dioxide to useful products and thus can establish the missing link in the fuel-cycle,’ he said.

Dr Hoque’s project is a collaboration among UNO, BHO Technology and the Louisiana Emerging Technology Center in Baton Rouge. His lab will develop advanced algorithms for analysing and optimising gene regulatory network-based biofuel production modelling in algae.

Dr Hoque is also the principal investigator with co-principle investigator Shengru Tu, a professor of computer science of the University of New Orleans (UNO), on a $60,073 grant from the NASA Stennis Space Centre to develop an automated tool to help NASA improve management and marketing of its intellectual properties portfolio.

A team of experts manually identified roughly 1,500 patents held by NASA, currently categorised into 15 categories. Using this grant, Dr Hoque and Tu will create more precise and user-friendly search tools that will enable users to more easily discover relevant intellectual property belonging to NASA.

Dr Hoque received his BSc and MSc degrees in Computer Science and Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) in 1998 and 2002 respectively.

Dr Hoque earned his PhD degree in Information Technology from Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, in 2008. From 2007 to 2011, he was a research fellow with Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. From 2011 to 2012, he was a post-doctoral fellow with Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Indianapolis, USA.

Since his joining UNO, as of now, Dr Hoque obtained totalling about $607,086 grants for his research.