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Fahmida Khan is a PhD candidate at the BP Institute University of Cambridge working on tribology-based coatings for offshore energy structures such as wind turbines and oil rigs. Her research uses a combination of Material & Marine Chemistry, Surface Science and Particle Physics in order to improve commercial procedures for Shell Technology. This has led her to join a short term UK-French collaboration in the Chemical Engineering Dept. as a Research Associate to continue her study on steels in the food engineering field. Prior to this, Fahmida worked on imaging for DNA sequencing with Machine Learning interface from Imperial College London whilst obtaining her MSci Chemical Physics degree at UCL – where her research project used surface analysis on frameworks for photoelectronics.

As well as progressing with her PhD at Cambridge, Fahmida simultaneously committed to joining the COVID-19 task force, by initially specialising in FRET florescence methods for national qPCR and ePCR analytics. Her contributions towards the pandemic led her to be shortlisted for the McKinsey Women Achievement Award. She proceeds to now work for the NIHR and the DHSC on bioinformatics, diagnostics, performing extensive analysis on genome-sequencing, ongoing mutations/variants to navigate the virus as one of the national Scientific Leads in the UK. She has since then moved on to working on a number of projects including: quantifying leukaemia progression from spinal fluids and exploring mental health relationships with genetics from DNA extraction.

Fahmida is keen to bring scientific innovation to real world and has initiated this via her time as an Energy Transition Associate in research technology as well as working on solar innovations, agricultural and sustainable solutions to combat oil spillages with pandemic waste via Morgan Stanley, the Cambridge Consulting Network, Institute of Manufacturing, KAUST, Cambridge Judge Business School and the Oxford Säid Business School respectively. Fahmida has now joined the Innovation Forum at the Cambridge UK and Bangladesh branch to explore climate crisis and biotechnology from an entrepreneurial perspective as a result of her role during the pandemic.