Biography
Prof. Aziz Ullah
Prof. Aziz Ullah
Kohat University of Science & Technology, Pakistan
Title: Surface water quality assessment and remediation using the freshwater flagellate Euglena gracilis
Abstract: 
For the assessment of water quality, physicochemical properties of samples are usually analyzed to determine whether the water fulfils the recommended standards or not. But these tests have several disadvantages like they may not cover all the pollutants present in a sample and are comparatively expensive, laborious and time consuming. Above all, analytical tests do not reflect the risk posed to living organisms by pollutants present in a water sample. To assess the actual ecotoxicity of pollutants the use of bioassays is nowadays recommended. This study focused on a fast method of water quality assessment using different parameters of Euglena gracilis as end points by applying ECOTOX, an automatic biotest machine. It uses different parameters like motility, swimming velocity, cell shape and gravitactic orientation of the flagellate Euglena gracilis as end points. Some other parameters of E. gracilis have also been tested as end points in this study. In addition, we tested the applicability of Euglena for removal of arsenic (As) from water. Arsenic remediation experiment revealed that Euglena can be applied as accumulator of As from water. Analysis of data we obtained for bioassessment with different chemicals and wastewaters led to the conclusion that motility and orientation of Euglena gracilis can be used as sensitive parameter for assessing changes in water quality. We recommend the use of ECOTOX as an early warning system for quality monitoring of surface water as well as municipal and industrial wastewaters.
Biography: 
Dr. Aziz Ullah obtained his PhD from Friedrich-Alexander University, Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany in 2011 and is now working as Tenured Associate Professor and Chairman at the Department of Botanical and Environmental Sciences, Kohat University of Science and Technology, Kohat. He has a total of 12 years research and teaching experience as faculty member at Kohat University of Science & Technology. He is the member of a number of academic and administrative committees in his home institute. He has recently been awarded the young scholar visiting fellowship at Xiamen University China. Dr. Ullah (author name Azizullah Azizullah) has published over 50 research and review articles in peer reviewed international journals and contributed four chapters in books published by international agencies. He is involved as Associate Editor in different journals and as reviewer in many international journals. He has presented and published abstracts in several national and international conferences. Dr. Ullah received several research grants from national and international funding agencies and supervised/supervising several theses at master and PhD levels.