Prof. Shakira Ghazanfar, currently serving as Senior Scientific Officer at the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC) since 2008, earned her Ph.D. in Food Microbiology from Quaid-i-Azam University Islamabad. With a rich and varied career spanning over 14 years, Dr. Ghazanfar has held roles as a research institute, industry engineer, applied researcher, and team lead in various national and international research institutes.
Her contributions to the field of food sciences are extensive, including the establishment of the Probiotic Food Lab at PARC, Islamabad, and the development of numerous AI-based frameworks for food safety product preparation and scientific databases. Presently, she holds the position of Project Manager for the Agricultural Research Linkage project between Pakistan and the United States, aiming to advance agricultural research and development in alignment with Pakistan’s long-term development goals.
Furthermore, Prof. Ghazanfar is recognized as an HEC-approved supervisor for Ph.D. candidates and has supervised or co-supervised over 70 students across various academic levels. Notably, she has also mentored international post-doctoral students. Her commitment to knowledge dissemination is evident through her role as the chief organizer of webinars and training sessions in food sciences, both nationally and internationally.
In terms of academic contributions, Prof. Ghazanfar has authored more than 100 research articles published in national and international journals. Additionally, she serves as an editor for esteemed publishing houses such as CRC Press, a Taylor and Francis Group, and Springer Nature, focusing on Probiotic and Machine Learning domains. She has also acted as a Guest Editor for prestigious journals, including “Applied Sciences” and “Probiotics and Prebiotics: Back to Nature to Improve Health” (biolifesas.org).
