STEP – Science, Technology, and Education in Pakistan

Salman Abdul Baset has a Ph.D in computer science from Columbia University and is working as a researcher at IBM Research. His area of research is cloud computing and management, energy efficiency, and peer-to-peer communication systems. He is one of the four recipients of Marconi Young Scholar 2008 award for promising research in communications.

Umar Saif, associate professor at LUMS, has been selected as a Young Innovator under 35 by Technology Review magazine, published by MIT. His work has been cited for improving connectivity in poor nations.

“The TR35 recognizes the world’s top 35 young innovators that are radically transforming technology as we know it. Their work – spanning medicine, computing, communications, energy, electronics and nanotechnology — is changing our world”, according to MIT Technology Review.

According to a LUMS press release today, this is the first time that a Pakistani has been selected in the TR35 list.

Dr. Umar Saif joins an elite group of researchers and entrepreneurs selected over the last decade. Previous winners include Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the co-founders of Google; Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook; Jonathan Ive, the chief designer at Apple; David Karp, founder of Tumbler; Harvard Professor Alán Aspuru-Guzik for his work on Quantum computers; and MIT Neuroscientist Ed Boyden, one of the inventors of the emerging field of optogenetics, which makes it possible to control neurons with light.

Dr. Saif joined LUMS after completing a post doctorate at MIT where he was part of the group that developed technologies for project Oxygen. At LUMS, his research is focused on technology for developing regions. He has recently developed BitMate, a BitTorrent client for improving download speeds in regions with poor Internet connectivity. The client was been downloaded more than 30,000 times by people in 173 countries.

Dr. Saif is also a co-founder of several startups at his Saif Center for Innovation. The startups include SeenReport, BumpIn, and SMSall. Talking to STEP earlier, he offered his vision of Saif Center in a previous interview here. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the Mark Weiser award, Microsoft Research award, and IDG CIO Technology pioneer award. He was also named as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2010.

Congratulations Umar!

The next talk in the 2010-2011 STEP Lecture Series will be given by Prof. Richard Garfield on Thursday, November 11th at 6:30pm Pakistan Standard Time.  Prof. Garfield is the Henrik H. Bendixen Clinical Professor of International Nursing at the Columbia University‘s Mailman School of Public Health.

The talk will be streamed live and a brief Q&A session will follow the talk. Undergraduate and graduate students inwfp survey report all disciplines and especially those enrolled in public health related programs, people involved with flood-relief efforts, and government and non-government organizations interested in flood-relief are strongly encouraged to attend.

Title: Determining Humanitarian Needs after Pakistan Floods

Where: Air University, AKU, FAST-NU Islamabad, IBA-Karachi, IMS Peshawar, and LUMS.

When: November 11th, 2010, 6:30-7:30pm Pakistan Standard Time (8:30-9:30am EDT).

Slides, WFP report, Video of the talk

Abstract:

The worst flooding in Pakistan’s history has left over 2,000 people dead and an estimated 15 to 20 million displaced, according to the United Nations – a total that exceeds the combined number of people displaced by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. During the last two weeks in August, Prof. Richard Garfield, the Henrik H. Bendixen Professor of Clinical International Nursing and Clinical Population and Family Health, helped coordinate the analysis of field surveys in four of the most severely affected provinces in Pakistan to determine short and long term needs for health, water and sanitation, nutrition, agriculture, livelihoods, shelter, and issues affecting women. This ‘combined needs assessment’ is an effort by the international community to jointly set priorities. The data is being used by the U.N. and other organizations. The project involved teams of researchers who fanned out across the country to interview flood victims in 380 locations in the provinces of Gilgit Baltistan, Punjab, Sindh, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Researchers spoke to refugees living in camps, damaged homes, and spontaneous settlements. From start to finish, the entire process in Pakistan took 20 days.  Preliminary results were presented in Pakistan to U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Valerie Amos, on her second day on the job.

Dr. Garfield previously took part in a similar effort in Myanmar and is evaluating a similar survey process done earlier this year in Haiti for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

Bio:

Richard Garfield, DrPH is the Henrik H. Bendixen Clinical Professor of International Nursing and the Director of the PAHO/WHO Collaborating Center in Advanced Practice Nursing. He received a doctorate from Columbia University School of Public Health. Dr. Garfield is a public health/community health nurse with expertise in epidemiology and international health. His research interests include community health promotion among minorities, the effects of wars on civilian populations, and the impact of economic embargoes on health and well- being. Dr. Garfield chairs the human rights committee of the American Public Health Association.

Help us connect your university!

Acknowledgments: Special thanks to Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC) for facilitating the video broadcast of this talk.

The first talk of the 2010-2011 STEP Lecture Series will be given by Walter Bender on Friday, October 15th at 5:30pm Pakistan Standard Time. Walter is founder of Sugar Labs and has served as President of One Laptop per Child for Software and Content, and as an Executive Director for MIT Media Lab. The title of the talk is Learning to Learn. The talk will be streamed live and a brief Q&A session will follow the talk. Undergraduate and graduate students in all disciplines, and government and non-government organizations interested in education are strongly encouraged to attend.

Title: Learning to Learn

Where: Air University, FAST-NU Islamabad, GIK, IMS Peshawar, LUMS, MCS, and NUST SEECS, Virtual University.

When: October 15th, 2010, 5:30-7:30pm Pakistan Standard Time (8:30-10:30am EDT).

Poster of the talk

Slides, Video of the talk

Help us connect your university!

Abstract: The Sugar learning platform is a free software project that is being widely adopted for use in both formal and informal science education settings around the world. Sugar is designed to promote collaborative learning through activities that encourage critical thinking. Designed from the ground up especially for children, Sugar offers an alternative to traditional office-desktop, increases the likelihood that computation will be used as a critical-thinking tool in the context of open-ended exploration and discovery, going beyond the use of the computer as a tool of instruction. It is the core component of a worldwide effort to provide every child with equal opportunity for a quality education.

The Sugar learning platform is grounded in almost forty years of university research in the area of technology and learning and research specific to computers in the classroom. Members of the partnership team have worked closely with intellectual leaders, such as Seymour Papert, Marvin Minsky, Alan Kay, and Lea Fagundes. This unique opportunity to create a large-scale embodiment of their ideas, previously realized only in small-scale pilot projects. It is of great value to the field of education science and a great opportunity to engage students and faculty in a global research program.

Lecture goals:
The Sugar software is maintained by a community of volunteers (educators and engineers) working with the non-profit Sugar Labs foundation, a member project of the Software Freedom Conservancy. Through the establishment of a Sugar Labs in Pakistan, we will directly engage science and engineering students and faculty at the leading Pakistani universities in furthering the development of Sugar; specifically, university students will engage in purposeful projects while advancing their own research and education. At the same time, we will be establishing the basis of a software development community within Pakistan that is focused on science education. Our long-term goal is a sustainable ecosystem of development and deployment within Pakistan, with rich ties to the international free-software development community. Within that ecosystem we expect to raise the next generation of scientists and engineers in Pakistan and have a significant impact on the skills and attitudes to creativity and problem-solving that these young learners develop. Expected outcomes of the program include the creation of new jobs and local opportunities for entrepreneurship that will open up from services in porting, testing, deployment, training, and support of the Sugar learning platform.

Bio: Walter Bender is technologist and researcher who has made important contributions in the field of electronic publishing, media, and technology for learning. Bender is on leave as a Senior Research Scientist at the MIT Media Lab which he led as executive director between 2000 and 2006. More recently, Bender served as president of One Laptop per Child for Software and Content where he coordinated the development of software and content including the Sugar interface for the XO-1 Children’s Machine computer. After leaving OLPC in 2008, Bender founded Sugar Labs to continue development of Sugar.

Acknowledgments: Special thanks to Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC) for facilitating the video broadcast of this talk.

Academic colloquia and lectures are an integral part of any university environment as they help spread new ideas and facilitate interaction between researchers and students. Read the rest of this entry »

The third talk of the STEP Lecture Series will be given by Dr. Aristeidis Karalis on Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 6:00pm PST. The talk has been organized in collaboration with Air University, FAST-NU Islamabad, LUMS Department of Computer Science, MCS, and NUST School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (SEECS), and will be streamed live. A brief Q&A session will follow the talk. Undergraduate and graduate students with non-engineering backgrounds are also encouraged to attend.

Title: Wireless Electricity

Where:
Air University
FAST-NU Islamabad
LUMS Department of Computer Science (Room 10-404 SSE),
MCS
NUST SEECS

When: February 25, 2010, at 6:00 pm Pakistan Standard Time (8:00am EST)

Abstract:
Consider the plethora of modern devices which vitally depend on short-lived, environmentally unfriendly, costly batteries or whose performance and mobility are restricted by their attachment to a cord. Imagine now a world where these apparati can instead receive their power wirelessly. We have developed a technology, based on STRONGLY-COUPLED resonant induction, enabling power (from mW to KW) to be transmitted across medium-range distances (from cm to m) very efficiently (typically from 20% to 95%). The exact achievable distance depends on the size of the device, the targeted efficiency (maximum tolerated wasted power) and, in general, the particular application. Moreover, far-field radiation interference can be employed to further increase the achievable efficiency or reduce the produced radiation. Our power transmission technology utilizes low frequencies and the harmless magnetic field, thus it can comply with international safety regulations. This technology has been implemented into real-world electronic devices by WiTricity Corporation, and relevant pre-recorded demos will be shown.

Bio:

Aristeidis Karalis is a founder of WiTricity Corp. (2007), and was a member of the MIT research team that developed both the theoretical basis and experimental validation of this novel method for wireless energy transfer. Aristeidis is a Post-Doctoral Associate in the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT. He received his Sc.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2008. He received his M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT and his B.Sc. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece. Aristeidis is a co-author of nine scientific articles and six patents. He was awarded the Paris Kanellakis Fellowship and the Ioannis S. Latsis Fellowship as a student at MIT.

Acknowledgments: STEP is very grateful to Dr. Shahab Baqai at LUMS for his continued support and help in organizing the lecture series. Special thanks to Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC) for facilitating the video broadcast of this talk.

The second talk of the STEP Lecture Series will be given by Dr. Sonesh Surana on November 12, 2009 at 8:30pm PST. The talk has been organized in collaboration with LUMS Department of Computer Science, NUST School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (SEECS), and Air University, and will be streamed live. A brief Q&A session will follow the talk. The talk will be aimed at a general audience. Undergraduate and graduate students with non-engineering backgrounds are also encouraged to attend.

Title: Enabling Sustainable Rural Wireless Telemedicine

Where: LUMS Department of Computer Science, Auditorium A-16, NUST SEECS, Air University
When: November 12, 8:30pm Pakistan Standard Time (7:30am Pacific daylight time)

Abstract:
With one ophthalmologist per over 100,000 people in India, there is a critical need to improve the utilization of eye doctors. In this talk, we discuss our work in deploying a long distance wireless network that enables high quality video-based telemedicine between rural eye clinics and centrally located doctors at the Aravind Eye Hospitals. In particular, we take a close look at the issues of financial and operational sustainability.

Bio:
Dr. Sonesh Surana focuses on the design and implementation of low-cost information and communication technologies (ICT) and related power infrastructure for developing regions. He received his PhD in Computer Science with the TIER research group at UC Berkeley in 2009. As part of TIER, he co-developed new WiFi-based long-distance technology enabling inexpensive targeted rural broadband coverage, and demonstrated high bandwidth point-to-point links as long as 380 Kms, a new world record. He also led the deployment of this technology for a live video-based rural telemedicine network at the Aravind Eye Hospital in South India, managing a range of non-profit, government, university and private stakeholders. This network, now financially and operationally sustainable, provides coverage to 500,000 people in areas with no other option for eye care. It has enabled over 100,000 remote patient examinations in three years, and 20,000 of those patients have received their sight back due to early diagnosis. He has done ICT work in Romania, Rwanda, India and Venezuela. He advises several non-profit development organizations and is also the co-founder of QVSense Inc, a company focused on building photovoltaic power management hardware solutions.

Acknowledgments: STEP is very grateful to Dr. Shahab Baqai at LUMS for his continued support and help in organizing the lecture series. Special thanks to Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC) for facilitating the video broadcast of this talk.

Correction: An earlier version of this post mistakenly posted the time for the talk as 7:30PM Pakistan Standard Time. The correct time for the talk in Pakistan is 8:30PM.

Image credits: http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2006/06/06_telemedicine.shtml

STEP Lecture Series is an initiative to bring interactive talks by distinguished researchers, academics, and entrepreneurs to universities in Pakistan via video conferencing. The series aims to help bridge the ‘knowledge divide’ by introducing students in Pakistan to the emerging trends and cutting edge research, and in the process, inspiring these students to take on challenging problems. The talks will also be recorded and made available on STEP website for later viewing.

The first talk in this series titled, New Approaches to Modeling and Control of Complex Dynamics, will be given by Dr. Adrien Treuille of Carnegie Mellon University on October 15, 2009 at 7:30 PM Pakistan Standard Time (9:30 AM EDT). The talk will be streamed live to LUMS Department of Computer Science, Mil College of Signals (MCS), and Air University.  Below is the abstract of the talk and a short biography of Dr. Treuille.

Title: New Approaches to Modeling and Control of Complex Dynamics
When: October 15, 2009 at 7:30 PM Pakistan Standard Time.
Where: LUMS Department of Computer Science, Mil College of Signals, and Air University
Abstract: Complex phenomena such as animal morphology, human motion, and large fluid systems challenge even our most sophisticated simulation and control techniques. Read the rest of this entry »

In this article, I make the case that grade I-XII textbooks, prescribed by the provincial and federal textbook boards, should be made available on the Internet for free. I discuss the reasons why this is necessary and the benefits that will accrue from such an effort.

Outdated and Incorrect Curriculum

In a household survey conducted by Gallup Pakistan in May 2009, 70% of the respondents said that they send their children to government-run schools. These schools are often faulted for imparting incomplete, incorrect, and rot education to children. The school textbooks prescribed by the provincial and federal textbook boards are part of the problem. The description of the relevant material in science and math textbooks is at times inadequate whereas the social sciences, religious, and Pakistan studies textbooks have been used by the successive governments to further their political agendas.

Making textbooks available online will allow educational experts both inside and outside Pakistan to easily scrutinize their content for clarity, correctness, and completeness. The feedback received from educational experts will greatly help to improve the quality of these textbooks. Read the rest of this entry »