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Yasmin completed her BSc at University of Surrey and MSc at University of Malaya then received a Chevening scholarship to pursue a Ph.D. in Plant Virology at the John Innes Institute U.K. She joined UM as a lecturer in the Department of Genetics and Cellular Biology and was appointed a full Professor in 2005, an elected member of UM senate since 2017 and the senate representative to the board of UM from 2019 to 2021. She retired offcially from UM in May 2021 and currently continues to serve UM as an honarary Professor at the Institute of Advanced Studies UM. She is also an adjunct professor at IUMW and an honarary fellow of the Tun Ghazali Shafie Institue for Strategic leadership at UCYP.

She contiinues to be part of  a dynamic research group and still publishes actively, focusing on utilising modern biotechnology strategies to tackle fundamental problems in agriculture as well on issues related to BioPolicies, Bioethics and Biosafety. Recently  she was involved in ASMs Science Outlook 2020 review and the National Biotechnology Policy II. She has filed more than 10 patents and graduated more than 20 PhD and 25 MSc students. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Sciences Malaysia and listed as in the Top Research Scientist Malaysia database. She was a founding trustee of the National Institutes of Biotechnology Malaysia, a founding member of the Asian Network for Biosafety Education and was a two term expert member on the National Biosafety Board. Yasmin was the first head of the Centre for Research in Biotechnology for Agriculture and chair of the University’s Biotechnology and Bioproduct Cluster (UMBIO). She was also chief editor of the Asia-Pacific Journal for Molecular Biology and Biotechnology. in 2009 she left UM for a 3 year secondment to the Ministry of Science Technology and Innovation Malaysia as Undersecretary of the National Biotechnology Division . During her tenure Malaysia launched the Bioeconomy Initiative Malaysia designed to spur growth of the biotechnology industry. Whilst there, she spearheaded the committee which led to the formation of the National Bioethics Council. She has sat on the Board of Directors of MARDI, the Board of Governors of ICGEB, Trieste and was the National Point of Contact (NPC) for UNESCO’s Microbial Biotechnology Network and SEA-EU-NET (Biotech). Prior to retirement she was  Associate vice chancellor (Industry & Community) & prior to this the  Director of the University of Malaya Centre for Innovation & Commercilisation.In these roles she focused on building the university's entreprenureal ecosystem andd fostering engagement and collaboration with industry and the community.  She is also founding  vice president of the Innovation and Technology Managers Association Malaysia. She has sat on the Board of MaGIC (mymagic.my) and more recently on the boards of UMInnovations SB, UMPlantations SB, UMCapital Berhad and Xeraya Capital. She is also a fellow of ICDM.    

see also her archival profile in Scientific American World Vision: http://www.saworldview.com/wv/profiles/yasmin-othman/