Dr Shams Tabrez Khan (Professor), obtained a PhD degree (2002) from Toyohashi University of Technology, Toyohashi, Japan. He subsequently worked with leading research institutions in Japan, including the National Institute of Technology and Evaluation (NITE), the Japan Biological Informatics Consortium (JBIRC), and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tokyo. He took a position of Assistant Professor at King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 2011 before joining Aligarh Muslim University in May 2017 as Associate Professor. He was promoted to Professor in May 2020. 

 He has published more than 100 research papers in peer-reviewed international journals mostly in Q1 and has presented his work at more than a dozen International Conferences. He was also awarded a Japanese govt. Patent. As a part of the Japanese govt. initiative to establish a national-level microbial culture collection (NBRC), Dr Shams successfully discovered many new bacteria genera and species from marine sediments. These strains are commercially available through several culture collections like CIP France (The Collection of Institut Pasteur) and DSMZ Germany. He was invited to contribute chapter in Bergey’s Manual of Systematics of Archaea and Bacteria, an authoritative international source of information on microbial classsification.

Dr Shams has worked on diverse projects, including designing a PHB-based solid-phase denitrification system, Cloning biosynthetic gene clusters, marine microbiology, microbial taxonomy, and developing a biosensor for Brucella, etc. Dr Khan has recieved a SPARC Project by the MHRD Govt. of India in collaboration with Utrecht University, the Netherlands.

The major area of current research interest is Molecular microbiology and its applications, Marine bacteria and their biotechnological application,  Alternative antimicrobials, Microbial taxonomy and culturing of unculturable bacteria,  Plant microbiome and plant probiotics Nanomaterials and their applications as antimicrobial agents.

He has served as Asst. Dean Student Welfare, member of University's Antiragging Squad, member of AMU Alumni Committee and was actively involved in University's accreditation.