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LAUNCHING OF DUBANA

It was a big family program at a community center in Maryland early in 2006. The host of the program was Dr. Arifur Rahman. Some 12/13 guests found out that they were the graduates of DU Biochemistry department. At some point they were gossiping together about their university life. The importance of communicating biochemists in North America came at this impromptu discussion and Dr. Shoaib Chowdhury volunteered to work on it. Dr. Chowdhury had a very good contact with some junior biochemists as he organized most of the programs back in the department for couple of years. His team included 3-5 years junior students and he maintained contact with some of them who were in US and Canada. It is important to mention here that there were 7-8 batches of students in the department at that time due political unrest in the country.

 

Dr. Shoaib Chowdhury started looking for the phone number and email addresses of biochemists. Dr. Arifur Rahman had an email group with 29 email addresses of biochemists. Dr. Chowdhury started collecting phone numbers and entered their email addresses in the yahoogroups. By the end of the April 2006, he had contact information for approximately 130 biochemists. He spoke to each biochemist in the list over phone and discussed about the possibility a get together. Biochemists of Maryland and Virginia in a joint meeting decided to host a get together meeting all biochemists of US and Canada. The first get together was held at the Potomac Community Center, Maryland in May 2006. About 40 biochemists from different states including Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Arizona, Virginia and Maryland were attended in that get together. It was an exciting moment for all the attending biochemists and provided a scope for much waited fellowship. There were talks by the professional biochemists about their jobs, open discussion on future outcome from this type of gathering and cultural program. Most important decision was to hold the gathering again in 2007 and host was New Jersey.

In New Jersey, research talk was added to the program. We continued our discussion on future get together and a decision was made to form an organization. As a follow-up of New Jersey ‘DU Biochemists’ get together discussion, in February 2009, Dr. Shoaib Chowdhury registered “Dhaka University Biochemistry Alumni in North America” (DUBANA) as a Nonprofit organization in Maryland along with Dr. Arifur Rahman and Dr. Rashidul Alam. Dr. Chowdhury was also registered himself as local agent of the organization and obtained a Federal Tax ID. A bank account was opened for DUBANA using Dr. Chowdhury’s address where all three were cosigners. At the same time a domain name ‘www.dubana.org’ was also purchased by Dr. Chowdhury which was first developed by Dr. Minhaz Ahmed who was also a longtime web manager for DUBMB.

During all these activities, a regular communication between Dr. Khairul Wara, Dr. Nur E Kamal, Dr. Arifur Rahman, Dr, Rashidul Alam and Dr. Shoaib Chowdhury were maintained. Mr. Istiaque Uddin Ahmed of Toronto was very instrumental collecting information for Canada biochemists and bringing them in the DUBANA platform. At the third get together in Boston (2009), a three members ad-hoc committee was formed for July to December to formally lunch DUBANA. The committee members were Dr. Nur E Kamal, Dr. Shoaib Chowdhury and Dr. AKM Khyrul Wara. This committee worked toward assigned duties and later Dr. Shoaib Chowdhury conducted the 1st election of DUBANA. After 4 years of discussion at 3 get togethers first elected committee of DUBABA started working on January 1, 2010. Dr. Nur E Kamal, Dr. Rashidul Alam and Dr. Arifur Rahman were elected as President, General Secretary and Treasurer. The five elected directors were Dr. Md. Hasanuzzaman (LA), Dr. Md. Zahidul Islam (MI), Mr. Ayub Khan (CA), Dr. Liakot Khan (MA), Dr. Golam Mohi (NY).