We are continuing Plasmonics personnel presentations with Zafar Ahmed stepping in the spotlight next.
Zafar Ahmed has travelled far: physically, academically and professionally. He is currently working as Senior Scientist at Plasmonics Oy. In his own words he is an organic chemist, and to be more precise, specialized in synthetic organic chemistry.
Zafar did his master’s degree in chemistry from his native country, Pakistan, followed by a doctoral degree from Germany where he attended universities of Greifswald and Rostock. He also spent one year as research fellow at Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany. Upon graduation, he spent a brief stint at European Research Center for Drug Discovery and Development in Siena, Italy.
In 2007, Zafar moved to Finland, his new home in the Nordics, where he first worked at University of Turku and later moved to Tampere University. He knew Dr. Pasi Keinänen through a Business Finland project and was familiar to Professor Mika Valden while working at the same campus. So while joining Plasmonics Oy, he was already familiar to the people with whom he was going to work.
“A normal workday is typically a mixture of office work and experiments in the lab where we can apply our curiosity and scientific skills to develop new products for the betterment of our society”, says Zafar. While Nanoksi’s antimicrobial Fotonit® coating is a mixture physics and chemistry, Zafar is currently working on the development of Fotonit 300 series, a light activated antimicrobial organic substance. Zafar has hands on experience with this project as he had been involved in it at the Tampere University where he was responsible for solving the synthetic issues and scaling up the procedures from milligrams to multigram scale. “In coming years, I believe that development of Fotonit 300 series will be complete and we will be in good position to commercialize it”, Zafar visualizises the near future.
Pakistan and Finland are worlds apart when it comes to culture, weather, cuisine or even sports. So what factors are the factors behind making Finland your new home? Zafar is used to being asked this question.
“Quality of life”, he says. “However, in the winter time I’m not too sure how great it is but in the summer, it is great!” he continues with a joking smile on his face. Zafar was relieved to find a cricket team of expats sharing the same passion for the game here in Finland. He is a member of Tampere Cricket Club, acting as Captain in 2014 – 2015 and Chairperson of the club in 2018. The team have done well as they are two time national champions (Finland). In addition to sports, Zafar is politically active in municipal politics where he ran twice as a candidate for the city council of Tampere. He served on the board of Regional Waste Management Company of Pirkanmaa province as an elected member between 2017 – 2021. His background in chemistry greatly helped him while serving in this capacity as he was aware of the risks posed by chemical or industrial waste to the environment. An immigrant knows how other immigrants feel or go through while settling in a new place, so he served as a deputy Member of Immigrant Council of Tampere in 2017 – 2019, actively participating in shaping the emerging multicultural scene of Tampere city.
The father@home claims to be a good cook. In his own words, this comes from being an organic chemist – the skill to mix and match different amounts while maintaining the fine balance works equally well in the laboratory and kitchen. In order to hold on to the roots, the family travels back to Pakistan regularly during winter to escape the darkness of Finnish winter. Pakistani summers are burning hot, so at the time, Finland is much better an option. All his children speak Punjabi, Finnish and English – true global citizens are growing up with a possibility to adopt the best of both worlds.
