As the new breed of HEC-Funded PhD Scholars joins Pakistani universities, this is a pertinent question to ask. Producing PhDs, whether within Pakistan or abroad, is a significant investment, the cost of which is ultimately borne by the society. Can we assume that, in return, we will see tangible socio-economic benefits from their research, or should the society view the universities as ivory towers with little link to the real problems of Pakistan? After all, with 76% of population living at under $2 per day and 65% of women illiterate, can research spending on network routing protocols or multi-camera tracking algorithms be justified?

There is no doubt that research investments have brought long terms benefits for developed countries. Even research in purely theoretical sciences, such as particle physics, has brought substantial derivative benefits for nations. For the purposes of this article, however, I wish to limit the scope to applied sciences, such as engineering or computer science, disciplines which are supposed to have direct socio-economic benefits rather than just indirect ones.

Young assistant professors are primarily driven by the desire to establish their credentials. Recognition, promotion and awards depend (or should depend) primarily on the quality of their research publications. Hence, the pressure to ‘publish or perish’ can be immense at a good university. Whether these publications will tackle problems of national interest is but a minor concern for a young professor. In the absence of any proactive mechanism of encouraging ‘relevant’ research, professors will publish in areas that are most easy for them to publish in. Often, this is an extension of their PhD problems, regardless of whether those problems have any relevance to our socio-economic context or not.

In fact, one can argue that substantial engagement with Pakistan’s pressing problems may actually be discouraged in practice, perhaps unintentionally so. Molding a practical problem into something publishable at the frontiers of knowledge is not an easy task, and requires considerable skill. Most of our research-active faculty is young, and does not have access to senior research mentors; it is perhaps too much to expect from a fresh PhD to extract ‘hot’ research problems that are rooted in our socio-economic context and are publishable in the top international conferences and journals. This balance can only be learnt from experience. Young professors therefore face a dichotomy: either work on something of relevance but little publishable value, or continue to publish in the area of their PhD research at the cost of socio-economic relevance. The latter option is often the easier path with higher returns in terms of recognition.

Interestingly, professors in developed countries are not challenged by this dichotomy. For one, the mechanisms of mentorship from senior researchers are well developed. However, more importantly, their research eco-system has matured at a national level. Research agendas in applied sciences are primarily driven by funding agencies. Since winning grants is critical for getting tenure, professors are forced to align their research interests with those of the funding agencies. These agencies craft their ‘Requests for Proposals’ (RFPs) very carefully, deriving them from national priorities in the case of public-sector agencies, and commercial interests in the case of private sector donors.

In the US, in addition to funding agencies, the National Academies play an important role in aligning research agendas with national priorities. Being elected as their member is the highest professional achievement and a goal that the best researchers strive for. The National Academies advise the nation on matters of science and technology, harnessing the best minds for this purpose. Policy makers, congressmen and governmental agencies frequently solicit advice from the National Research Council, a division of the National Academies, on matters of technology and its impact on the society. Thus, the best minds in the country directly contribute to setting national priorities and technological agendas through this mechanism.

This maturity of the research eco-system ensures that young researchers are contributing towards the nation’s socio-economic development while working towards their personal career goals. Hence, in the US, if a graduate student is working on network protocols or multi-camera tracking, one can trace a direct link of that research with either the commercial interest of a company funding that research or the priority of a public sector funding agency such as DARPA or NSF. However, when this student graduates and returns to Pakistan, the same research agenda may turn out to be out-of-place in our socio-economic context.

Why then does the researcher not shift agendas to suit our context better? There are many reasons. A clear mechanism of aligning national priorities with research goals is missing due to the immaturity of the research eco-system. Availability of research grants programs, such as the NRPU or National ICT R&D Fund, is a relatively new phenomenon, and it seems that there is more money than capable researchers. Hence, restricting funding to certain areas does not make sense right now. Moreover, the pressure to publish restricts us to our comfort zones. Jumping into an unfamiliar area is difficult even for seasoned researchers. There has to be a strong incentive to do so, perhaps in terms of research funding or recognition.

Yet, any person of conscience cannot turn a blind eye the pressing problems that our nation faces. All Pakistanis, more so those who have had the privilege of studying to the highest level, must play their role in bringing the country out of its current quagmire. If the best researchers get together to study the issue of, say, non-availability of clean drinking water, I am sure that some solid output will emerge. It would not matter whether the researcher is a computer scientist or an economist or a chemical engineer – all have a role to play in solving such mega problems.

So should a researcher give up the urge to publish in top international journals in the desire to contribute to national agendas? This is a tricky question. Good quality publications are the primary credentials by which a researcher is known, similar to valor medals that a soldier so proudly displays. They sift the fluff from the serious players. A researcher will lose credibility if he or she does not have an excellent publication record. Therefore, a researcher cannot, and indeed should not, use the ‘relevance’ argument as an excuse for poor quality of publications.

Yet in my experience, once a person delves deep into a problem, be that any problem, he or she soon reaches the frontier of knowledge, where fundamental contributions are publishable. The key skill required by the researcher is to dig out the fundamental (and unsolved) problems from a practical application. The motivation may come from the practical area, say, the traffic congestion problem or the non-availability of clean water. However, the publications will come from those fundamental unsolved sub-problems which require extending the scientific frontier. Hence, with a little bit of skill and substantial mentorship, the dichotomy that I mentioned earlier may be avoided – one can have the best of both worlds. However, it is critical to have the perspective of the overarching socio-economic context of one’s research; so that we are not just creating new projects and publications, but rather developing real solutions.

One argument often put forth by university researchers is that the public sector is not mature enough to absorb or appreciate the need for research. My personal experience, on the contrary, has been quite opposite to this conventional wisdom. I have found a wide spectrum of government organizations to be extraordinarily open about discussing national problems, and appreciating the need for well-thought-out solutions. However, the key word here is ‘solutions’. Government officials dealing with mega problems on a daily basis have little patience for ‘ivory tower’ research discourse or intellectual discussions. They need real solutions, and appreciate them more than what we, the professors, normally expect from them. Once while working on a project for a defense sector organization, I asked a manager why his organization had never funded a research project in a university before. The reason is two-fold, he said. Firstly there was never a need earlier, because the public sector itself used to be an attractive employer and always managed to hire the best talent; but more so, because, in his opinion, the universities had never demonstrated any substantial skill that would enable him to develop better solutions.

I would like to conclude with some practical recommendations for policy makers to encourage relevant research:

• Funding Agencies: It is critical for funding agencies to be cognizant of the needs of country, and to mold their RFPs and review processes to be aligned with our national priorities. They should involve major national stakeholders, including senior researchers and policy makers, into developing the RFPs. It is not uncommon to find senior researchers employed at NSF and DARPA as consultants: It is largely their vision that shapes the RFPs and hence guides the researchers in that area.
• Mentorship: Vice-chancellors, Deans and senior faculty members should appreciate the importance of mentoring younger faculty towards projects that fit well in Pakistan’s socio-economic context.
• Proactive Outreach: Universities must develop the capacity to interface with the field-players: government departments, NGOs, citizen groups and policy makers, so that their research gets channeled in appropriate directions. One example of such a policy is encouraging faculty to use their sabbatical leaves to work in Pakistan’s public or private sector, to develop strong linkages. (Universities which do not have a sabbatical leave policy should institute one for research active faculty).
• Encouraging Multi-disciplinary Research Teams: Complex real-world problems are inherently multidimensional, and real solutions rarely require just a single type of expertise. Multi-disciplinary research teams that bridge the gap between engineers and social scientists, computing professionals and economists must be encouraged by universities.
• Recognition: A system of rewards, based on the impact of research, should be instituted by universities as well as by professional bodies such as the IEEE Chapters or the Higher Education Commission. The practical impact of research should be taken into account during promotion decisions.

So when will the man on the street start to benefit from research in computer science or engineering? Researchers of applied sciences should view this question as a challenge – and start thinking about creating solutions for the tough problems that our country faces.  The ball is in our court, so to say. Rather than the mindset of creating newer projects and better publications around our field of specialization, we should start thinking about creating solutions that work in our socio-economic context. After all, PhD can be viewed as training to tackle tough problems, not only the ones that fit just right in our comfort zones, but even those that challenge and stretch us in unexpected directions.

STEP: Till now, mostly you were funding projects in the academia. Would you be looking at funding projects that are directly initiated by the industry?

QS: We are supposed to fund projects submitted by the industry. Our proposal can be initiated by even an individual. But, being an entity that funds public money, the longevity of the institution to which we are giving money is very important to us. An individual can take the money (from us), work for a little while, and then disappear. What do we do then? Universities don’t disappear. They can provide longevity and credibility to the project. And, it is not (just) longevity for the length of that project but even after that.

We don’t fund projects just for the sake of those projects. We fund projects to create an eco-system as well. You don’t plant a seed on a land that may be abandoned or may  be sold for building a commercial building and the tree will be cut down even before it has a chance to get 5 feet high.  So, when industry comes to us, we say, it may be better for you if you come through a university channel.

That’s not a (strict) condition, however. We have also funded industry proposals directly. Actually, we very clearly say that we are a pre-angel fund. We fund creation of technology. But, we are finding out that the challenge of monitoring them can at times become difficult. A lot of these companies start to take this funding as work-for-contract. They say, ‘oh, you asked us to do these things and we’ve done these things, end of story and we’re done’. When you are trying to create an eco-system, and you’re not even asking for any money back, you want the sort of vision where the entity that gets the money runs with the ball. It doesn’t matter whether it was a 100m dash or a marathon; if you have gas, just keep going.

STEP: You talked about longevity and stability but, in a sense, innovation is counter to that. Fostering innovation may mean saying, ‘okay, here’s a smart guy, he has a really smart idea, let me give him some money to go build something’.

QS: We do exactly that. We just say, please park in a university so that there is some stability. You know, smart guys can be very fickle too. [Laughter] If the smart guy walks out, we get totally stuck. If we were VCs, and it was private money, we could say, okay, we were going to lose ninety percent of the projects anyway. This is one of the ninety percent. Ten percent will take us forward. But, with the public funding and government level accountability, we can be taken to task for funding such projects.

Whereas, if the money goes to a university, and a professor is involved, then if nothing else the professor becomes the archive. If the smart guy moves on to the next smart idea, some student or another entrepreneur could come and take the idea and developed IP forward.

STEP: So, what’s the motivation for industry then to get professors up to speed?

QS: One of the ways I motivate industry to partner with the academia is that I give them the argument that suppose you get  Rs. 15-20 million from us and suppose the solution that you create is a hit, and suddenly your product is bought by General Electric or Microsoft or some consulting company. Now, the buyer says, we want to take your  company to a 300-people development centre. Where are you going to get 300 people from? The idea is that, if an entrepreneur hosts his project in a university and gets a professor and a few students involved, he may not get 300 students by the time the project is completed but at least you would have sown the seed in the university and you will be two years ahead in creating this pipeline. So, a very big positive effect for the industry here is that the human resource developed by universities is in line with industry’s requirements.

STEP: Shouldn’t we make a technology park or an incubator with every university?

QS: That’s exactly what we’re doing. The only difference is that we believe that building a building is not necessary. In several cases, the incubation center of the university is about 3 miles away in a rented house. If the university has space, we compensate the university with rent. If the university does not have space, then the industry-academia joint project rents an office and we pay for electricity, air-conditioning, etc.

STEP: Do you think that the industry that is generating this revenue, which is the telecom industry, has a right to demand back some return for this money? Or, do you think those are two decoupled things?

QS: I think they gain a lot by wealth generation and improvement of standards in the country. If the improvement is more suitable to their goals, it’s even better.  So, as any entity we have to pay attention to our financier. Some of the thematic areas for research and development, for example, the center of excellence for telecom operations, are of interest to the telecom industry. There is also a significant probability that education through ICT will light up their network as a lot of that activity may have to happen through mobile phones.

STEP: The Fund’s vision states that you want to create a knowledge-based economy. Historically, economies have evolved from agriculture-based to post industrial-revolution industrial economies, and then recently to knowledge-based economies. In a sense, we are still largely an agricultural economy. Does it make sense to jump directly from an agricultural economy to a knowledge-based economy?

QS: I think there’s significant leap-frogging that’s happening today, for example, our land line connections are 4 million, and our mobile connections are 60, 70, 90 million depending upon what interpretation you go after. Like I talked about before, one of the key things that I really want to push for is to come up with scalable and sustainable solutions for delivering high quality education by using ICT technologies. That you can do without having to go through the industrial age.

Actually, I think a significant amount of technology management models have to be re-thought. I am not an expert on it, but when I hear statements from people who say that they are experts on technology management and technology transfer, and they go through traditional models, I tell them that tradition has been thrown out by telecommunications.

STEP: When you fund research, who owns the intellectual property (IP) that is produced?

QS: We own the IP. The Fund owns the IP. But, the grantee has an irrevocable and perpetual license to commercialize, further develop, sell, and productize the intellectual property. The only thing is that this license is non-exclusive; that is, the grantee cannot stop another party from using the developed technology. If somebody else wants this technology, we have to give it. But, realistically, our goal is to generate wealth in Pakistan. So, if you have taken the technology forward and created a significant company leveraging the developed technology, we are not going to — at least as long as I am the CEO — actively look for people who can use this software and bring you down. After all, we helped create your organization.

Future of the Fund

STEP: Do you think that the Fund is under some sort of risk or pressure to spend? And, if yes, where does the pressure come from?

QS: Oh yeah, we are very much under the pressure that we are not funding enough. This pressure comes from very well-meaning political managers, and I really mean well-meaning. A bureaucrat at a certain level stops looking at the process we are following and starts looking at key parameters from his macro view. And one of those parameters is the amount of funding that we are being able to disburse while satisfying the quality constraints. Similarly, from (the viewpoint of) political management a key parameter is the impact that we are creating.

STEP: So, is there a chance that the Fund might lose some of its funding and the money channeled somewhere else?

QS: Could be. But, I don’t think that’ll be a good thing to do because, if we were allowed to build buildings and buy equipment for a university, we could spend a billion rupees in six months. We could spend four billion rupees in 6 months.

STEP: What about some of the other directions that the Fund is taking? I know the Fund also has a scholarship program.

QS: Yes, we are funding 4-year scholarships for deserving students of rural area public schools. At this point, there are over a 1000 students in the program who are going through FAST, NUST, GIKI, COMSATS, IIU, and other universities. The students who entered the system in 2006 are becoming seniors now, and at least at FAST, since the first batch was only at FAST, they are at the top of the class.

STEP: What are some of the success stories of the Fund?

QS: One of the success stories that I am really proud of is the open-source software engineering course developed by Dr. Fakhur Lodhi at FAST-NU Lahore. In this course, the instructors select an open-source software, and the students become part of its support network. They have to either add a feature or fix a bug that the entire open-source community linked to that software has to accept.

The course has been a real success, so much so that this year a team from FAST got accepted at Google’s Summer of Code program (which is very competitive). Next year, their goal is that every kid who goes through this course to be accepted at Google.

Then there’s a project at FAST-NU Islamabad where they are working with lady health workers and they have developed the whole interface for neo-natal care. That has actually led to a briefcase-sized device which has equipment to measure temperature and blood-pressure, etc. This device has become so popular that a company that does work for UN and USAID throughout Africa and Asia wants to buy it.

Then, there’s HL7, Health Level 7. It is a standard for transferring medical data between applications. Its latest generation, which is probably version 3, is being developed at NUST in open source and already a lab in Pakistan has adopted it where they are using it to transfer data between their centers in Lahore, Islamabad, and Karachi.

STEP: Are you hoping to get the Pakistani diaspora involved with the Fund?

Yes, absolutely. But a problem that I have at times with the diaspora is that they say ‘I make $150,000 a year, so if I give you my time will you give me a percentage of my salary?’

I go as far as saying, look we will get you a solution developed, and you build a Google on top of it and become a billionaire. We would not ask for a single penny back. But, for now, if you spend time in Pakistan, may be, we can compensate your time in Pakistan at a Pakistani level (but not beyond that).

STEP: Well, we hope that there’s enough good will for people to contribute voluntarily, be it as program managers or reviewers or mentors. Of course, they cannot be compensated based on their US salaries.  Thank you for your time. We hope that our readers will find this conversation just as interesting as we did.

QS: Thank you, for giving me an opportunity to share my thoughts.

STEP Editors: Let’s start with the history of the Fund, if you can tell us a little bit about it. We understand that it was in a dormant state before it was revitalized.

Dr. Qasim Shaikh, CEO, National ICT R&D Fund:

Yes, it was in a dormant state but, as I tell my team, I don’t think that we are the opening batsmen of this team.  Actually, the Fund was created when PTCL was the only telecom operator (in the country). I think, and somebody has to correct me, that the key person who pushed (that) some of the PCTL’s earnings should go into research and development in Pakistan, like Bell Labs at ATT, was Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman. Then the Deregulation Act was passed and in the Deregulation Act it was mandatory that every telecom operator will have to contribute 0.5% of their revenue to the Fund. That included internet service providers as well, not just the large service providers. Since there were more contributors to the Fund than just PTCL, it didn’t make sense for it to stay within PTCL. So, it was taken out of PTCL and created as National ICT R&D Fund.

It’s true that under PTCL it was difficult to provide funding and it was in a dormant state but a lot of credit has to go to the top political and bureaucratic management of Ministry of Science and Technology that created this PTCL R&D Fund. Awais Laghari, who was the minister of MoIT, was very instrumental in pushing this National ICT R&D Fund.  So that’s how I was introduced to the Fund. When I saw the earlier vision proposed for the Fund, it was like few lines of ‘create alternative source of energy, etcetera’. I was very fortunate to get an opportunity to give my thoughts towards the vision and about a year later, I was lucky and very privileged to be appointed at the CEO’s position.  Since then, we’ve been trying to push things and have done a few things right and a lot of things wrong (laughter).

STEP: Our understanding is that no other industry has an equivalent fund.

QS: Actually, I found out that it’s not true; for example, the healthcare industry has a similar fund to which all pharmaceutical companies contribute.

STEP: Is it true that the Fund generates a billion rupees a year?

QS: Yes, about a billion rupees a year.

STEP: Are we able to spend that effectively?

QS: We have about 2.5 to 3 billion rupees in our bank. We try to distribute it with corporate efficiency but at the end of the day, the requirements of transparency and the requirements of accountability that must be there, since we distribute public money, are slowing things down. That’s one factor.  Second factor that’s slowing things down is that it is taking us time to create the capacity for research and development in the country. These two factors are extremely important and they are the key bottlenecks we have right now.

I think that transparency and fairness must be maintained even if takes us a little time to disburse funds made available to us by Telecom operators. As far as the capacity is concerned we are trying to build an ICT eco-system that does innovation-centric R&D. This is really a paradigm shift for our ICT research community. Publishing papers should be a result of solving important problems. Publishing papers regardless of the impact of that research in solving real industrial problems is not the key thing that our Fund supports. We’re happy that papers are published and publishing papers is an indicator of quality of work, but our objective is innovation-centric research and development.

On Vision of the Fund

STEP: But, building an eco-system to do innovation-centric R&D from scratch is a very difficult objective to achieve, isn’t it?

QS: You are very right, we did not really have a research and development eco-system within the country and we have made it even more difficult by saying, do innovation-centric R&D. So, we were behind to start with and we’ve put our goals even further.

(The way we address this problem is that) we force people who submit proposals to us to not just think about the problem that they are trying to solve, but also the value-chain that they are after, the key bottlenecks in the value-chain, and the state of the art in removing the bottlenecks in the value-chain. The value-chain does not have to be 100% within Pakistan. So, for example, if you can create employment opportunities in Pakistan by solving an IT problem of the West or Africa or Australia; that’s significant activity as far as we understand.

STEP: This value-chain, does it have to be in terms of benefit to the industry or to the people of Pakistan?

QS: It has to be of the benefit of the people of Pakistan. Typically, it goes through industry. Typically, you deliver solutions through industry. But, then, you deliver solutions through academia as well. Some of our most successful projects are in removing bottlenecks in our education. For example, we’ve had two significant bottlenecks in our IT education. One is the lack of mentors for the final year projects. LUMS is very fortunate that it has significant faculty and it has a significantly good ratio of faculty versus students. But that’s not true at all universities in Pakistan. Final year projects are a very important component of our education system, and in a large number of universities students literally have to knock from door to door and beg companies for final year projects. And, typically, they’ll get a project to develop a database for the company.

The second bottleneck was teaching software engineering. How do you teach software engineering principles to a student who has never written more than a thousand lines of code and those too not in a project? These were two very significant bottlenecks (in our IT education that we are working to remove).

STEP: This is a very interesting thought but, the vision of your Fund highlights research and development. Would you like to say something about the scope of the Fund because what you have described above sounds very different from the Fund’s vision?

QS: Actually, I think that in the Third World, the term ‘R&D’ should be called D, R&D. The first ‘D’ is also for development. R&D at Stanford, Berkley, Caltec and MIT shines because there are a few hundred thousand engineers around these universities who are involved in development and are implementing the state of the art. It is, therefore, possible for this large number of highly qualified engineers to provide problems to professors who can then do just ‘R’ and extend state of the art. But, in Pakistan’s context, our universities do not have the industry support system that US universities have. Therefore, we really have to do ‘D’ in parallel so that R&D (can be done) in Pakistan.

STEP: Since we are in the process of building a research eco-system right now, do you think it would be easier to have focused solicitations of proposals as opposed to generic solicitations where the need and value of the research is already taken care of by some member of either the industry or the agency which requires that?

QS: I think that’s a very valid question. And, the Fund’s operational manuals and guidelines mandate that. The important thing is that this is such a new organization within the context of Pakistan that we have to first find out the lay of the land. So, basically, in last two years or so, what we have done is that we have funded unsolicited proposals. Through those proposals, we have realized roughly six areas in which we have manpower and some semblance of an eco-system in Pakistan.  My favorite phrase is that we’re not going to play ice-hockey in Pakistan; we’re going to play field hockey in Pakistan. So, we had to first find out what specialized R&D our eco-system can support.  Now we’re in a position to push a few thematic areas.

STEP: What are these thematic areas?

QS: One of the key areas that I want to push is telecom operations. I’m specifically saying telecom operations because I don’t think we should go after telecom equipment at this point; we should go after telecom operations. People get emotional about this issue for various justifiable reasons but just take the example of the airline industry. There’s Boeing and Airbus that design and manufacture large jet planes and a few companies in South Africa, Brazil and Europe that make propeller-based planes, and the rest of the industry is dominated by airlines. Fortunately, Pakistan has an amazing combination of companies for telecom operations in Pakistan. The largest telecom operator in the world, Mobile China, has operations in Pakistan. One of the oldest telecom companies in the world, Telenor has a large network in Pakistan. Other important companies such as Singtel, Eitesalat also have operations in Pakistan.   So, we have a very interesting eco-system and we’re at a stage where these significant Telecom companies are in a position to give direction to state of the art R&D in telecom operations and design of new services.

The second (key area) is developing and scaling sustainable solutions to deliver international quality education by leveraging information communication technologies. This is so important that if we do not go in this direction, we do not have an iota of a chance to solve Pakistan’s problems.

STEP: You are talking about things like MIT’s Open CourseWare?

QS: No, way beyond that. In my mind, if I could wish one thing for Pakistan’s education system it would be that every child who goes to school in Pakistan is given meaningful class work and home work that is properly graded, evaluated, and the student is provided nurturing feedback. This is something that is not happening at Pakistan’s best public and private schools and it is probably not happening in Pakistan’s premier private IT University where I am sitting right now.

The type of load that our faculty has, it is not possible for them to provide feedback to each student in the class. So, one of the things that I want to push for is e-evaluation and e-feedback. In a year or so, we are going to create a Facebook-type application where students create solutions to different problems, there’s a pyramid of experts who check these solutions and, like Wikipedia, (what is incorrect) is thrown out. The question I have not answered yet is: who is going to pay for it?

STEP: The Fund perhaps?

QS: No, no. The scale is so big that the Fund cannot do it alone. It is, literally, a multi-billion dollar investment. But, I’m going to get it done either in this position or as a member of Pakistan’s ICT eco system.

STEP: Any other areas?

QS: We are finding some very interesting traction in health care. So, for example, working with Dr Faisal Sultan of Shaukat Khanam Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Center, we came up with a very interesting idea where we can create something between a lady health worker and the district hospital. We are thinking of an IT system which has a lady health worker at one end and a physician or a trained biochemistry graduate, who has an expert system at his disposal, at the other end.

The other things that we’re very interested in are inexpensive solutions for medical imaging. If you look at medical imaging, there is an analog front end which does analog to digital conversion. This (frontend) is very expensive and we cannot develop it in Pakistan yet. So, we buy these components. But, once the information is digitized, it’s all yours to process using novel algorithms and software and send it back to user interfaces. So, at least we can do the processing and algorithmic part ourselves. We want to move in that direction.

And finally, network security is also very important for us.

STEP: Would there be a time when you would want a national level debate on what are our IT priorities?

QS: Sure! But, I don’t think this is the right time.

STEP: Because the Fund is at a very nascent stage?

QS: Nascent and because, at this point, we have Rs 1.8 billion worth of proposals in the pipeline. We will still have money left if we blindly funded all of them.

STEP: How much of the choice of these areas is your personal influence and how much of it is driven by input from others?

QS: I really wanted it to be a national-level decision. But, I have also realized that you cannot expect everything to be a national-level decision because then it takes forever to decide and no progress is made. So, I am going to push these three or four areas that I just mentioned. For these areas, very significant Request for Proposals (RFPs) will be developed, they will be advertised, proposals will be solicited, evaluation criteria will be published, and it will be a very transparent process. The only thing that will not be transparent will be selection of these areas. But, once these R&D themes get established, then we are going to select more (thematic areas).  By then, stakeholders will start to realize that the National ICT R&D Fund is creating a significant positive impact .and they will seriously start to submit ideas.

STEP: As a researcher, I have a choice to write a proposal for HEC or for you. How do you see the scope of research that you fund being different from what HEC funds?

QS: I think that the key difference between us and the HEC is that the HEC has a huge mandate. They fund from philosophy to horticulture to IT to nanotechnology. Their mandate for supporting R&D is very broad. It is not fair to expect that HEC will look at any one of these segments in depth and try to create a detailed ecosystem that we try to create. Whereas since we are focused only on ICT we are able to look at it in-depth. There’s a negative side as well to this focused approach. It is very difficult for us to fund multi-disciplinary proposals. We are trying to develop a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the HEC where for example if there is a proposal in biotechnology then biotechnology part is funded by HEC, and we fund the ICT part. We are moving towards that but it is taking us time.

STEP: That brings me to another point that I wanted to ask you. Information Technology (IT) can be defined in a very broad way because it is serves a lot of different industries. What is your definition of IT?

QS: Actually, that’s a very tough challenge for all of us. And, finally, I have come up with a very silly example, which is this: if somebody writes the best paper in philosophy using Microsoft Word, should we fund it? Or, if somebody is designing the most eco-friendly building using AutoCAD, should we fund it? No, we can’t. But, if you want to improve AutoCAD to develop a building, then we can fund it. We can also fund chip design, because chip design is a very significant part of ICT.

On the Proposal Evaluation Process

STEP: Changing directions a bit, can you walk us through the grant approval process?

QS: In the formal process, we first do an internal evaluation. We have employees who are educated in science and technology but we cannot be expected to employ experts of every field in our organization. In my mind an important role of internal evaluation is to make sure that the proposal is at a level where by sending it to the external evaluator, we do not waste external evaluator’s time. In my mind, that’s the idea of internal evaluation.

(Once a proposal is approved by the internal evaluators) then, we send it to external evaluators. The pool of external evaluators, which is approved by the board, has experts from within Pakistan as well as foreign experts.

STEP: Does the pool of evaluators include Pakistani diaspora?

QS: Actually, we are very interested in getting the diaspora involved because the benefits are mutual. They send their ideas as external evaluators and they also get to realize depth, breadth and quality of ecosystem that is being created in Pakistan. When they read the proposal they realize the quality of work being done in Pakistan. So we are using them as well.

STEP: What about the standard (of proposals that are funded)?

QS: I’m very happy that you asked this question. We need your help in that because the number one challenge for us right now is to figure out what is the standard at which you accept a proposal for funding — at semantic level, not at syntactic level. At syntax level our approval process looks beautiful, but we still haven’t answered some fundamental questions: what is the standard at which we say that the proposal is acceptable? Is the high jump bar set at 2 feet, 5, feet, 7 feet, or 9 feet? So, where to set the bar? Who sets this bar? What is the process for setting this bar? Once these standards are set, what is the process for disseminating this information to stakeholders? And, finally, how do we get their feedback?

For sure, our standards at this point cannot be the standards of US, EU, or Japan. And, I’m pretty sure that our standards today are better than standards in Nigeria and Ghana. But where are they? And, where should they be?

STEP: But, in peer review process, isn’t the bar set by the peers? So, as the quality of the peers improves, the bar continues to go up.

QS: Well, that’s happening but, since we are at a very initial stage of creating an ecosystem, we really need a nurturing mental framework. So, actually, I have started developing a document describing what we want to see in a proposal at a very high level. I am going to distribute it to the stake holders, informally. I am not going to make it a formal process otherwise we’ll never get anywhere. I am going to wait for two weeks. The suggestions that come back will be very welcome. If they don’t come back, I’m going to use the CEO’s stick and I’m going to say, this is it.

First I’m going to do it at a very high level, and iteratively refine its granularity until we have a check-list. Then, I am going to give legal teeth to this checklist by first getting it recommended by our proposal appraisal committee and then getting it approved by the board. However, no checklist of this type can be expected to be static. So, I am going to create a mechanism for improving or modifying this checklist and that mechanism will get approved by the board as well. I am not sure 100% what this mechanism would be, but possibly a proposal evaluator can add another parameter and a certain authority within the organization can look at it and decide whether adding this parameter to the existing checklist makes sense. If the parameter is added to the checklist, it will then be advertised on our website.

In part two, we talk with Dr. Qasim Sheikh about the role of industry-academia partnerships in creating a knowledge-based economy and the future of the National ICT R&D Fund.

STEP: How did the idea of this study come about?

The idea for the article actually originated from Nature’s Editors late last year when HEC’s budgets and utility were being increasingly questioned by the new government in Islamabad. Nature had been an observer – and sometimes a commentator on HEC’s initiatives – and approached me to see if I’d be interested in writing an independent and objective piece on Pakistan’s Higher Education Reforms. I worked with Nature’s editors to put together a group of authors who we believed brought a diversity of experience, insight, and credibility to this exercise.

This preliminary review, I hope, will be a starting point towards an extensive process of external policy peer review and a constructive self-examination leading to greater effectiveness of higher education policies and programmes in Pakistan. Another very important aspect of Nature’s interest in this work was to see if other countries contemplating similar reforms could learn some lessons from Pakistan.

STEP: How long did the study take? What data sources and methodologies were used?

We began working on this subject with the Nature piece in mind about 8-9 months ago. Obviously, the first step was to approach HEC itself and to seek their cooperation in doing this. There was really no point in saying anything on the subject without having access to HEC’s own data and viewpoint.

We had excellent cooperation from Dr. Atta Ur Rahman as well as Dr. Sohail Naqvi and other members of HEC staff. In addition to HEC, I also met and talked to a number of university leaders as well as HEC’s critics including Dr. Hoodbhoy. Dr. Naqvi made available to us a lot of data that we believe had not been publicly available in this manner before. We were cognizant, however, that this is self-reported data and that any conclusions we will make based on this data alone are going to be fiercely challenged by HEC’s critics.

In order to balance HEC’s own view, we also used external data to validate the claims made by HEC. Specifically, we decided to use Thomson Reuters’ data on scientific publications as independent measure of Pakistan’s publication activity and impact. We must emphasize, though, our analysis is merely a start. One of our key recommendations is for HEC to subject itself to an independent external peer review of its policies and programmes and use their guidance to improve these. This peer review must also include taking a look the current data at hand and the data collection systems in place and to improve these to provide continuous guidance to HEC planners.

STEP: What was the most important (or surprising) finding of the study?

I believe that this is still a work in progress as Pakistan’s reform experiment is itself a work in progress. I won’t speak for other members of the team here, however, I was personally surprised by quite a few findings. First of all, there does seem to be an unambiguous improvement in Pakistan’s publishing performance as well as its relative impact. The publications have tripled over the last few years and there are significant gains in relative impact of Pakistani papers. Our preliminary testing shows that this finding is not too influenced by self-citation bias. One negative finding – though not unsurprising – was the decline in the publishing performance in social sciences (and business and management and humanities etc.). This is a bit alarming – for me – because I do believe that well developed social sciences are very important for a balanced development of a nation.

I believe that several programmes may be rightly guided – even though there may be implementation lapses. The foreign PhD programme is one example. I believe, and hope, it will deliver in the medium to long-run. The NRPU – the competitive grant funding programme – is in the right direction – although the peer review process needs to be strengthened. I think that a 47% acceptance rate is just too high – especially given that a vast majority of Pakistani faculty have not had much exposure to competitive research for considerable periods in the past. The investments in the digital library and internet connectivity are also critical elements of the research infrastructure.

On the other hand, there are still several things that are not so right. There are things that can potentially go wrong – seriously wrong – if important issues are not addressed. I am especially concerned with the policies vis-à-vis the Domestic (Indigenous) PhD programme. That is certainly something that should be subjected to greater scrutiny and evaluation from both outside and inside of HEC. Also governance and management reforms within universities have been rather slow. However, I think there is a need to take key stakeholders along rather than force it on universities.

STEP: The statistic that I found most interesting in the article is the +20% relative impact of Mathematics publications from Pakistan. However, Dr. Hoodbhoy, in his critique of your article, asked the question of whether self-citations were removed or not in computing this number. To quote Dr. Hoodbhoy, “did the authors try to eliminate self-citations (a deliberate ploy) from this count? If they had – as I did using an available option in the Thomson Scientific package – they might actually have found the opposite result.” How would you respond to this criticism?

The short answer to Dr. Hoodbhoy’s question is that no – this number includes author self-citations. BUT we were definitely concerned about self-citations. Here is what we did to account for this potential bias.

We extracted a database of roughly 13,000 papers (representing all fields) indexed by Thomson Reuters between 1999 and 2008, each listing at least one author address in Pakistan. We also extracted all papers that subsequently cited these papers. We then enumerated instances of ANY country citing into this population of papers (i.e., all nations citing Pakistan), along with a separate measure of only Pakistani authors citing Pakistani papers. We did this for two distinct time periods: for papers published and cited during 1999 to 2003, and during 2004 to 2008.

For the first time period, there were 8,436 occurrences of all nations citing the Pakistani papers (or, to repeat, those papers bearing at least one Pakistan author address), and 1,527 occurrences when Pakistan-only papers cited the group. In percent terms, 1,527 of 8,436 equals 18.1%. Thus, by this measure, Pakistan self-citation could be quantified as 18.1%. For the second time period, the comparable numbers were 26,294 instances of all countries citing the Pakistan group, and 6,597 instance of Pakistan citing Pakistan. Expressed as a percentage, the figure is 25.1%

To summarize: 18.1% Pakistan self-citation for the 1999-2003 period, and 25.1% for 2004-2008. Now it is important to understand that country self-citations are not a perfect proxy for author self-citations – the variable that we’re really interested in. However, author self-citations are a subset of country self-citations and hence country self-citations do give us an upper bound on author self-citations. That is, author self-citations for Pakistani papers are definitely less than 25.1% – and perhaps a lot less than that – in the post-reform period.

We can compare this figure with generally accepted empirical norms of author self-citation globally. In Gami et al (CMAJ, 2004) the authors estimate self-citation in diabetes research at about 18%. Falagas and Kavvadia (FASEB, 2006) arrive at self-citation rates in biomedical research at 17-20%. Others have confirmed the general trend in medical literature of around 1/5^th of all citations as being author self-citations. Garfield and Sher (1964) arrive at a self-citation figure of 20% for basic research papers. Trimble (1986) arrives at a figure of 15% for all astronomical papers. Bonzi and Snyder (1986) found an average self-citation rate of 11 per cent across a range of disciplines, varying from 16 per cent in the physical sciences (chemistry and geology) to 3 per cent in the social sciences. The frequency of self-citation is also found to be independent of quality of publication.

So, Pakistan’s likely author self-citation rates may be only slightly higher – if not within – the global norms for self-citations. It is quite unlikely that all – or even most – gains can be wiped out by author self-citations. Dr. Hoodbhoy may be right in that self-citations may have increased from the past but that is likely to be expected for a variety of reasons – some of which quite legitimate. For example, as a closely knit research community develops within a country and interact through local conferences they are more likely to be aware of each others work and hence cite authors from within the country. Had we been able to exclude self-citations from these relative impact figures, these results would perhaps have been only marginally smaller. Because we were dealing with publications across multiple disciplines over multiple time periods and across multiple countries we could not correct relative impact figures for self-citation. However, given the above analysis we don’t find a reason to feel so alarmed as to totally rubbish the entire publishing performance of the country.

Should this be an issue HEC should carefully watch and analyse? – definitely yes. Should this totally nullify the improvements in Pakistan’s publication record? – we don’t believe so.

STEP: You mentioned that a lot of data provided by the HEC was not used in the article because of the space limitations. The only real statistical analysis in the current article is the table on relative impact factors. What other metrics could have been used to scientifically analyze the performance of HEC, had space not been the limiting factor.

HEC did provide a lot of data and complied with our requests for additional data as much as it could. Potentially, data could inform a number of very interesting questions vis-à-vis the performance of higher education reforms in Pakistan. We were not able to undertake some of these analyses because of the following reasons.

First, a lot of data currently available only accounts for inputs to various programmes – number of PhDs awarded, number of fellowships granted, number of grants awarded are input data. This needs to be complemented with relevant and comparable output data so that outcome assessment can take place.

Second, for data to be useful for subsequent analyses, the analytical and evaluation plan must be built into the programme itself. It is much harder – and more expensive – to cobble together data – ex post – and come up with a very clean assessment of outcomes.

As an example of the sort of things that additional analysis could do is to assess whether the foreign faculty hiring programme (FFHP) is an effective investment. During my meetings with vice chancellors I was told that there is a backlash against FFHP from the faculty and one of the allegations is that the people recruited on FFHP are no better than some of the better faculty members available within the country. This, and several others elements of the reform, are empirical questions that could be easily addressed by intelligent use of data.

STEP: Don’t you think that the HEC is under more scrutiny (at least informally) than other government departments? For example, I don’t see any debate on the performance of, say, MINFAL. The team at HEC has, at the very least, brought about many positive changes compared to the UGC of the past. Do you think there is a chance that overly negative criticism can be counterproductive and may deter such initiatives to positively reform a government department in future?

Yes, certainly there is a chance that overly negative criticism may be counter productive. However, I believe that what we have tried to do is to present our best objective view of the reforms. I believe that it’s a pity that the debate on this important set of reforms hovers between the two extreme viewpoints. I believe that good data and analysis can really refocus this debate and turn it into constructive one. Good data and analysis can move debate away from one of opinions to one of facts.

I believe it is important to have this debate in an open, transparent, and civilized manner. Such a debate will inspire greater trust and buy-in from the people and systems this reform is seeking to address. Pakistan has invested upwards of 50 billion rupees in higher education over the last 5-7 years and it is in all our interest that we make the best use of this investment.

STEP: One of your key recommendations is for the HEC to be reviewed externally. What are some of the examples (from around the world) of the external peer-review process that you suggest HEC subject itself to? Should this process not be done through the Standing Committees on Education in the Senate and/or the National Assembly?

The process of policy peer review is well-established – especially in the west. The nearest equivalent that comes to mind is the peer reviews organized by the National Academies in the US of major government funding programmes (such as the SBIRs, ATP etc.). These are panels of eminent scientists (Academy Fellows) and relevant experts looking over various aspects of these programmes. Because of the unique circumstances and pervasive nature of HEC’s programmes, HEC’s peer review would have to be done by a mix of Pakistani and internationally placed members. The findings of these reviews are then debated by legislatures who have the final say in determining policies informed by these findings and recommendations.

STEP: Based on your study, how do you compare HEC in Pakistan to other equivalent bodies in the developing countries?

I believe HEC has done a considerable amount of work in a very short period of time and some of it may have already begun to reap results as well. It has tackled a very difficult area of reform and has shaken the academic environment in Pakistan. In the depth and breadth of what it has tried to do, HEC has very few parallels in the world today. Most other relevant bodies have only tinkered with the systems that they have tried to reform. It is this factor that probably prompted Nature to invite an opinion piece from the authors and an editorial commenting on these reforms and the lessons that could be learnt by other developing countries. HEC had the liberty and resources to do so and it made the most out of it. Whether or not this hugely ambitious experiment will succeed at the expected level in the end remains an open question.

STEP: If this article is work in progress, as you have said, what further study or analysis can we expect from your team in future?

We are planning to finish a larger piece on higher education reforms in Pakistan and hopefully publish this in the near future. In addition, we intend to dialog with HEC, leading academics and academic administrators in Pakistan to explore how the suggestions in our article can be best taken forward.

Related Post: Pakistan’s Higher Education Funding Holds Many Lessons for Developing Nations: Nature

The more detailed opinion article in the current issue of Nature is co-authored by a distinguished team, including the lead author Athar Osama, a science and innovation policy researcher, former minister of education, science and technology Shams Kassim-Lakha, the director of Boston University’s Pardee Center, Adil Najam, Christopher King of ScienceWatch.com and Syed Zulfiqar Gilani of the Institute of Education and Research, University of Peshawar and a board member of Seneca College.

The article, titled “Pakistan’s Reform Experiment“, overall takes a positive view of HEC’s reforms, stating that “the HEC seems to have changed the culture of Pakistani academia considerably over the past 5 years”. Using data from Thompson Reuters, the authors show that the impact of papers from Pakistan, relative to the average of the field, has improved significantly in Mathematics and Engineering over the last five years. In fact, papers from Pakistan in Mathematics have 20% higher impact factor than the world average! In comparison, papers in  fields other than engineering and mathematics have not seen a significant improvement in the relative impact, which may be consistent with more HEC money targeted at technical disciplines.

At the same time, the article points out some potential pitfalls that the HEC needs to avoid. HEC cannot be the “initiator, implementer and evaluator” at the same time. Accountability of HEC initiatives by academics is necessary. The pace of reform has led to resistance by the universities, (a fact acknowledged by HEC Executive Director in our earlier interview), and HEC has not been fully successful in winning over that resistance. The attempt to produce too many PhDs in local universities may have compromised the quality of the PhD degree significantly. And leaving behind certain disciplines in the favor of others, especially critically important areas such as the social sciences, has not been the most prudent of policies.

We feel that the article is a well-balanced analysis of HEC’s performance. There is no doubt that the landscape of higher education has changed for the better, in a very short amount of time. However, it is also clear that higher education reform is a long term agenda. What is important is not how many grants are funded, but whether scholarship is thriving in the country or not. The conclusion of the article aptly makes this point:

The HEC has, over the past few years, made considerable progress. Its success, however, must not be measured by the number of grants made or PhDs awarded. Rather it should be judged on whether it is creating a culture of research — one driven not by financial incentives, but by a genuine desire to create new knowledge and to enable the broader society to reap the benefits. While that remains to be seen, Pakistan’s experience has useful lessons for other countries.

The article comes at an appropriate time, as the new Chairman of HEC, Dr Javaid Laghari takes over (see our posts here, and here). It provides an objective analysis to the new chairman, as he will take on the review of the previous policies and initiatives.

Coming up soon: We, at STEP, contacted the lead author of the study, Dr Athar Osama. Coming soon are his replies on what led to this study, what data sources and methodologies were used and what was the most surprising finding of this study.

Photocredit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/leena/2488225767/

Dr. Javaid Laghari appearing on Breakfast at Dawn today

Dr. Laghari also stated that human resource development will continue to remain a high priority for the HEC and the 2500 PhD scholars on foreign scholarships and 3500 scholars working towards their PhD in Pakistan need not worry about their scholarships being discontinued.

In responding to STEP’s question (communicated to the host via Twitter), Dr. Laghari stated that good policies of the past chairman will be continued, and the effort will be on improving whatever has been achieved in the past. In response to another question from STEP, Dr. Laghari said that rumors of the merging of HEC and the Ministry of Education are not true. Both have a role to play and they should work together for improving education in the country.

Overall, we at STEP are optimistic about the prospects of his appointment for higher education in the country, based on his responses. Oftentimes, there is a tendency on the part of a successor to undo all that has been achieved by previous administrators. Dr. Laghari was generous in giving credit to Dr. Ata ur Rehman but also pointed out some not-so-successful initiatives like the projects to build many universities with foreign collaborations. He implied that his role at HEC will be to build upon and improve what has been achieved in the past.

Before joining SZABIST, Dr. Laghari was a tenured professor at the State University of New York (SUNY), Buffalo, where he spent almost 15 years as a faculty member. He holds a PhD Degree in Electrical Engineering from SUNY, Buffalo (1980), MS from METU, Ankara (1975), and BS from University of Sindh, Jamshoro (1971). Dr Laghari is an accomplished researcher in the areas of high voltage systems and space power technologies. According to his resume available online, he has published 41 journal papers, including papers in IEEE Transactions on Electrical Insulation, Applied Physics Communications, IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, Journal of Materials Science Letters and IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics. Many of his papers can be accessed from IEEExplore (login required) and Google Scholar.

Dr Laghari supervised six PhD students to completion at SUNY, Buffalo. He received more than $5 million in sponsored research grants during his tenure at SUNY and established the Space Power Institute there. He also held the position of Director of Graduate Studies at SUNY, Buffalo for the last few years of his stay there.

About his interest in issues of education, Dr Laghari’s website states the following:

Dr. Laghari is an academic at heart. He is concerned about the state of education, both in schools and universities, in Pakistan.

He is actively involved in the educational affairs of the country. He has raised many concerns on the Senate floor and has recommended an increase in the lower education budget so that the literacy rate of Pakistan can be substantially increased.

Dr Laghari believes in liberal education and supports the secularization of the syllabus. He is a strong proponent of education for girls and women, particulary from the underdeveloped areas.

Dr Laghari(‘s) goal is that Pakistani universities join the ranks of leading universities in Asia. He has already achieved this goal by making SZABIST among the top universities in Asia as ranked by BusinessWeek, AsiaInc, Time and CNN.

As a member of Senate, Dr Laghari served on three standing committees including the Standing Committee on Water and Power. He has severely criticized Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) and Karachi Electricity Supply Corporation (KESC) for their performance and advocated for the adoption of conservation measures as the solution to the looming power crisis in 2007. In an earlier article published in 2006 titled “Power Vision for Pakistan“, he suggested the use of nuclear and coal power plants, arguing that Pakistan is well-positioned in both areas in terms of technical expertise and resources, yet not utilizing that potential for power generation. He also advocated exploring wind and solar energy, and argued that because ‘water and power’ are always lumped together in Pakistan, progress towards other sources of power has been minimal.

In the past, Dr Laghari has written on the subject of higher education, including articles about “Promoting Research for Development” (Dawn 1997), “The Role of Private Sector in Higher Education” (The News 1998) and “Vision of Professional Education in the 21st Century” (The News 1997). As the Chairman of HEC, he will have ample opportunity to put these ideas to practice. We wish him all the best in this new role, and hope for rapid progress in higher education in the country.

The review of the current education policy was started in 2005, well before the expiry date of the previous education policy. This is explained, rightly so, in the introduction of the new policy draft:

Two main reasons prompted the Ministry of Education (MoE) to launch the review in 2005 well before the time horizon of the existing policy framework (1998 – 2010) had approached. Firstly, the policy framework has not served as a satisfactory guide, as the policies pursued under that framework had not produced the desired educational results. Performance of the education sector has been deficient in several key aspects, most notably in access rates, and in quality and equity of educational opportunities.

The white paper also summarizes the gaps in the education sector in this paragraph:

The “education condition” in Pakistan is far from acceptable with deprivation being experienced by  large sub-groups – from children to adults. The existing education system has failed to cater to the needs of the children. Resultantly, a large majority of children stay out of school; another significant  majority goes to school but do not find education productive and therefore drop out. Those who continue school are not being equipped well for “life in the 21st century”. Though policies to promote quality education have been formulated and promulgated from time to time, successive failures of the promises and the practice of missing the well marked goal posts have created a credibility gap.

As Dawn points out, the delay is unexplained and perhaps hints at political considerations taking over:

After extensive consultations, in 2007 a white paper was produced, offering a sensible approach. But for unknown reasons the government has been dillydallying on the matter. Last year, a Canadian expert was called in and another draft was prepared in 2009. Even that was shelved in April when it was placed before the federal cabinet which felt it was not good enough and needed more input from the provinces. Nothing has been heard of it since then.

Going through the policy draft and the white paper, one can well understand that a lot of good work has gone into both the documents. The preparation of the white paper presented a new consultative approach by the Ministry of Education,  by incorporating extensive input from educational policy experts and other stake holders (see Annexure 1 of the white paper). Initially, a review of all previous education policies and reports was undertaken. Next, 23 different ‘Green Papers’ were written on issues related to education in Pakistan. These were subsequently shared with key stakeholders for feedback. The Ministry also undertook three research studies, on review of previous policies, a study of the legal framework for education, and a study on how far the tangible targets of the previous education policy have been met. A number of consultations were held after this, including issue roundtables and education conferences in each province. Focused consultations with key organizations, such as IED-Agha Khan University, HEC and National Reconstruction Bureau were also held. Feedback from these discussions was then incorporated into six thematic papers. All of this input was summarized into a white paper, published in Dec 2006 and subsequently revised in February 2007.

Is the delay deliberate and politically motivated, or does the government have genuine concerns regarding the policy?

This is not the first time that Pakistan has been named in these ratings recently. In fact, Pakistan’s record has been very consistent since March 2008, the earliest ratings that are available on the website. Here’s a listing of Pakistan’s mention in the ‘rising star’ ratings:

• March 2008: Engineering, Mathematics
• May 2008: Materials Science
• July 2008: Engineering
• September 2008: Computer Science, Engineering, Materials Science, Mathematics, Plant and Animal Sciences (5 areas!)
• November 2008: Engineering
• January 2009: Computer Science
• March 2009: Computer Science
• May 2009: Materials Science, Plants and Animal Sciences
• July 2009: None

Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, the country’s top university in terms of the number of publications per year, has also been recognized as a ‘rising star’ institution, in Jan 2009 and July 2008 issues, both times in the area of ‘Engineering’.

The ratings are based on the largest percentage increase and not the absolute numbers, and therefore, cannot be used to quantify research productivity in absolute terms. However, they definitely demonstrate the trend of a substantial increase in international publications from Pakistan compared to previous years. It is very healthy that a number of different areas are covered in these past two years, showing an across the board enhancement of research productivity.

While there has been a lot of debate on the effectiveness of HEC’s reforms in higher education, at least one thing is clear: the increased emphasis on research, largely due to HEC’s programs, has started to bear fruit. These are hard numbers here, based on data by the company that maintains the largest scientific citation index in the world, and cannot be easily refuted by the nay-sayers.

Acknowledgement: Thanks to Dr Usman Qazi for alerting me to these ratings.

Here are a few photos from Umair Asim’s blog, a Lahore-based ameteur astronomer, who had volunteered his time (and his telescope!) for these events.

The audience at District Public School, Okara, at the Teesra Falakayati Mela

Another view of the audience at Okara

Umar Asim explaining the craters of the moon to the audience

A banner annoucing the event

The live viewing is preceeded by a general-interest lecture on astronomy. Second from left in the front row is Dr Saadat Anwer, president of the Khwarizmi Science Society

An earlier event at Phool Nagar, the Doosra Falakayati Mela

Setting up the telescope at Government High School, Phool Nagar

Here’s a video of the first event at the Punjab University, Lahore…

UPDATE: Dr Sabieh Anwer, the general secretary of KSS, just informed me that the next Falakayati Mela will be at the historic Rohtas Fort near Jehlum, which has the oldest school of the area from pre-independence period. For more pictures of the earlier events, have a look at this page. An article on the Phool Nagar event was published in The News.