Rate My Professor Arif Ashraf

Arif Ashraf is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Botany at the University of British Columbia. He earned his Ph.D. in Plant Biology from Iwate University in Japan. Prior to his current appointment, he served as Assistant Professor at Howard University in the United States from 2023 to 2024, completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Massachusetts Amherst from 2019 to 2023, and was a visiting scholar at the University of Tokyo from 2017 to 2019. He also held a summer internship at the University of Saskatchewan in 2016.

His research focuses on cell division, cell polarity, and nuclear movement in plants, with applications to understanding plant development, responses to environmental conditions, and potential drug discovery. Ashraf investigates these processes using model systems such as Arabidopsis thaliana as well as crop plants including maize and wheat. Selected publications include work on molecular markers for cell cycle visualization in Arabidopsis (2024), opposing polarity domains in cell division (2024), stomatal closure mechanisms in maize (2024), polarized nuclear positioning in maize stomatal development (2023), and functions of nuclear envelope proteins in cell division (2023). His professional email address is arif.ashraf@botany.ubc.ca.