NEW YORK: Bangladeshi-American scientist professor Dr. Maqsudul Alam, who invented genomes of Papaya, Rubber, Jute and Fungus, passed away in Hawaii of United States on Saturday.

He was 60.

Maqsudul, who had long been suffering from liver cirrhosis, breathed his last at the Queen's Medical Center in Honolulu, capital of Hawaii State at 10:16am on the day local time.

Major general (retied) Monjorul Alam, brother of Dr. Maqsud, confirmed the matter to banglanews.

Maqsudul’s friend Anwar Kadir told banglanews that his friend had been admitted at the hospital for 14 days. On Thursday, internal bleeding began and his liver, kidney and lung went ineffective.

His burial will be held at Hawaiian General Park at 3:00pm on Sunday local time, said Monjorul.

The globally famed geneticist left behind his wife, a daughter and a host of well-wishers to mourn.

Born in Faridpur in 1954, Dr. Maqsudul Alam completed his bachelor and M.S. on Microbiology at Moscow State University, Russia. He also attained his first PhD on Microbiology there in 1982.

Later, he also did another PhD on biochemistry at Max-Planck-Institute, Germany in 1987.

The scientist came to forefront after Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, on August 18, 2013, announced that Dr. Maqsudul led a team to “crack the genome of white jute (Corchorus capsularis)” 

The invention came under the Basic & Applied Research on Jute (BARJ) Project at Bangladesh Jute Research Institute (BJRI) in Dhaka the capital. Bangladesh government financed the project.

Maqsudul was also sequenced genomes of papaya in the US and that of rubber in Malaysia.

Dr. Maqsudul Alam was a professor of Department of Microbiology at University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, capital of Hawaii State, and a member of advisory board at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology.

According to Maqsudul’s Curriculum Vitae, acquired from the university website, the scientist had at least 34 international publications.

Maqsudul was also the assistant director of Marine Bioproducts Engineering Center, a partnership between University of Hawaii and University of California at Berkeley.

BDST: 0828 HRS, DEC 21, 2014 /  updated 0949 hrs