Abrar Jawad Haque, a graduate of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE) of Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB), has been awarded the prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Fellowship under the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme.
He is scheduled to begin the three-year PhD program in September 2025, at the University of Hamburg, Germany, with additional research placements at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany, and Leiden University, Netherlands. Additionally, Abrar also received another MSCA Doctoral offer in Belgium and a fully funded PhD offer from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Australia.
The MSCA Doctoral Networks, named after the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Marie Curie, are widely regarded as Europe’s leading and most competitive doctoral programs. Abrar was selected from approximately 160 applicants through a competitive multi-stage selection process.
The fellowship is fully funded by the European Union and covers living expenses, research costs, mobility, and family support. His research will focus on nanodevices for bionanoparticle detection, involving nanotechnology, biosensing, and advanced materials for diagnostic applications in healthcare and environmental monitoring.
Abrar, who joined IUB in the Fall of 2018, completed his B.Sc. in EEE in 2022. He was awarded the Erasmus Mundus Joint International Master’s Scholarship in 2023. He began the Master’s program in September of that year in Smart Systems Integrated Solutions, jointly offered by Aalto University (Finland), University of South-Eastern Norway (Norway), and Budapest University of Technology and Economics (Hungary).
During his Master’s program, he interned at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva in 2024, followed by his Master’s thesis at SINTEF, Oslo, in June 2025, focusing on piezoelectric MEMS. Prior to beginning graduate studies, he worked at KPMG Bangladesh – Rahman Rahman Huq, as an Officer in the IT department in 2023.
At IUB, Abrar worked for two years as a Research Assistant at the IUB Photonics Simulation Laboratory (IUBPSL) under the supervision of Dr. Mustafa Habib Chowdhury, contributing to research in photovoltaics and plasmonics. His work involved computational modeling of novel solar cells using the FDTD Solutions and CHARGE solvers within the Ansys-Lumerical platform.
During this period, he published eight peer-reviewed research papers, including one journal article and seven peer-reviewed conference papers, all indexed in SCOPUS. His undergraduate thesis was published in the prestigious international peer-reviewed journal Applied Optics in 2023. He also served as a Teaching Assistant under Prof. Dr. Md Abdur Razzak in the Department of EEE at IUB.
“The MSCA fellowship is a significant step in my research career. Being selected before completing a Master’s degree reflects the foundational support I received at IUB. My early research experience under Dr. Mustafa Habib Chowdhury at IUBPSL was critical in building my skills and direction. I am also grateful to my other professors at IUB whose guidance helped shape my academic foundation.”
Dr. Chowdhury, who is the Head of the EEE department at IUB, said “Abrar has shown consistent initiative in academic research since his undergraduate years. His selection for this competitive fellowship reflects not only his personal commitment but also the quality of students we aim to produce at IUB.”
In his personal life, Abrar is the son of Dr. Muhammad Sirajul Haque, former Dean and Chairperson of the Department of Economics at East West University and Chittagong University, and is supported by his loving mother, brother, sister-in-law, and a young nephew.
MSK/
