News Flash
CHITTAGONG UNIVERSITY, Mar 16, 2026 (BSS) - Professor Mohammad Al-Forkan of the Department of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology has been appointed as the new Vice-Chancellor (VC) of University of Chittagong (CU).
The announcement was made by Education Minister A N M Ehsanul Haque Milon at a press briefing at the Bangladesh Secretariat today.
The official notification regarding the appointment has not yet been issued.
Responding to a query about his new role, Dr Al-Forkan said, “This is a new responsibility for me. However, I have not yet received any official order”.
Dr Al-Forkan has long been associated with the politics of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party in Hathazari of Chattogram. He is currently serving as senior vice-president of the CU Nationalist Teachers’ Forum.
During the 13th parliamentary election, he also served as convener of the election management committee for BNP-nominated candidate Mir Mohammed Helal Uddin in the Chattogram-5 constituency.
A founding chairman of the Department of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology at the University of Chittagong, Dr Al-Forkan obtained first class both in his BSc (Honours) and MS degrees in Botany from the CU. He began his academic career as a lecturer in the Department of Botany in 1993 and was promoted to professor in 2006.
In the field of higher education and research, Dr Al-Forkan has also achieved notable distinction. He earned his PhD from the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom, conducting research on genetic engineering of indica rice. He later completed postdoctoral research on improving the quality of oilseed crops at the University of Alberta in Canada and the Agricultural Research Council.
He also served as a visiting professor at the University of California in the United States. He conducted his PhD and postdoctoral research with Islamic Development Bank (IDB) scholarship.
In 2004, Dr Al-Forkan played a leading role in establishing the Department of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology at the University of Chittagong.
Under his initiative, the department set up the Functional Genomics and Proteomics Laboratory (FGPL) and a state-of-the-art automated climate-controlled greenhouse.
As a research supervisor, he has overseen the theses of 39 MS students, seven MPhil researchers and one postdoctoral fellow.
During the Covid-19 pandemic between 2019 and 2022, Dr Al-Forqan served as a coordinator in Covid-19 detection activities at the university.
During his 31-year academic and research career, Dr Al-Forkan has published 51 research articles. He has also served on the editorial boards of several internationally reputed journals and worked as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Biological Sciences.
