Director of the Graduate Programs (MS and PhD) in biological sciences. Also Director, AGEP-T and EnvironMentors Programs (externally funded programs). Chair of ASU Institutional Biosafety and Coordinator of the Marine Environmental Sciences Consortium at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Alabama. Currently major advisor of three PhD students and external advisor of 2 Ph.D. students at the University of the West Indies. My current research focuses on (1) fate of toxic chemicals or xenobiotics that are either deliberately or accidentally discharged in the environment (water, soil and sediment). (2) I study diverse population of microorganisms and factors that influence their ability to naturally detoxify xenobiotics including bioremediation of other environmental carcinogens and toxicants, and antibiotic resistance using molecular-based diagnostics tools; (3) my research also focuses on study of the microbiome of human gut and its relevance to environmental health and diseases, and (4) biodiversity of microbes in the Gulf of Mexico surface water via metagenomic analysis.
