I point to the publications from the Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), founded in Italy by the great Abdus Salam (http://twas.ictp.it). The Academy is a collection of first-rate highly successful researchers in science and engineering from South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and South America, many of whom have surmounted the challenges of doing research in inhospitable intellectual milieus. Read the success stories of both individuals and institutions in the archive of TWAS newsletters. I believe readers of STEP will find much to emulate and learn from there. Some of the scientists and educators working in TWAS’ member countries truly inspire by what they have accomplished.

One could be in the form of a monetary fund set up and nourished by contributions from industries. A percentage deduction must be made obligatory for industries to pay, and they are to be compensated in the form of tax incentives given to them.

Second, the universities must also try invovle industry expertise by hiring industry advisors on a term-based appointmnet, and they are to be invited to the univerities regular meeting of their academic bodies called for the purpose of curriculum design and devlopment.

Third, the universities have to regularise and formalise setting up a regime of international and national curriculum eximners in such a way that it ultimately leads to becoming a routine type bienneial or tetra-eneial business. It would be very much contributive if a faculty member from the NED University in Karachi visits the NWFP UET in Peshawar as an examiner to ultimately furnish the host university with his/er suggestions on how teach, set up qustion papers, conduct exams, offer and evaluate the undergraduate projects.

Equally or more instrumental in the curriculum development would be similar views/suggestions by an international exminer invited not necessarily from wetern countries but also from from Eastern, South Asian or Asia Pacific countries.

Sheroz Khan
STEP FORWARD

http://www.amazon.com/Great-American-University-Preeminence-Indispensable/dp/1586484087

As these grants are targetting unestablished faculty, they are more risky, but compared to the NSF CAREER they have to be heavily contextualized within the DoD research universe. Taking the liberty to speak for them, I believe the NSF award is closer to what Affan has in mind, and these programs are much closer to what Sohaib had in mind.

Under this program, DARPA selects approximately 30 non-tenured faculty members (’rising stars’, if you will) and provides them with a two-year, $300,000 research grant (which, if I’m not mistaken, is in the same ballpark as a typical NSF grant amount). But, that’s not all. The program also comes with significant networking opportunities.

Here’s how the objective of the program was described in a recent press release about the latest awards:

“The objective of the DARPA YFA program is to identify and engage rising research stars in junior faculty positions in academia and expose them to Department of Defense (DoD) needs and DARPA’s program development process. The YFA program provides funding, mentoring, and industry and DoD contacts to these faculty early in their careers to develop their research ideas in the context of DoD needs. DARPA’s long term goal for this program is to develop the next generation of academic scientists, engineers, and mathematicians in key disciplines who will focus a significant portion of their career on DoD and National Security issues.”

The program has a fairly elaborate review process but it’s main attraction to researchers is the fact that at least some of the proposals funded through this program are picked up for multi-year, multi-million dollar funding iniatives by DARPA and other agencies.

In fairness to our funding agencies, I think ideas like this can only be realized in a mature research community. The ad-hocness of our current structure is less by design than due to the small size and inexperience of our academic research community as a whole.

I disagree with Sohail’s implication that ensuring broad societal impact should be shelved until capacity is reached.

Where I whole-heartedly agree with you is that if a proposal has excellent intellectual merit and does not demonstrate any practical significance, it should also be able to find money. Even in a narrow, self-serving way, quality ‘irrelevant’ research coming out of Pakistan will help the scientific brand of Pakistan.

“You see there is a supply and demand issue. Pakistan’s problem, and this is something that one needs to really, really understand, is that of capacity. We just don’t have that many researchers, who are doing research. So of these people who are applying for research now, if you want to put in an additional constraint of forcing them to focus on local problems only, then you will have to define what is locally relevant and what is not. That appears to be an easy problem to solve but in practice it would be just about impossible. There are only degrees of relevance here. All research is relevant to Pakistan but the time frame in which it may impact local conditions is going to be different.”

Separately, at the risk of repeating, building academic research for the purpose of satisfying John Doe is not the right approach. Research is, to quote Faheem Hussain,”unfortunately an elite activity” (http://sse.lums.edu.pk/documents/opednewsletter2005Jun.pdf). Either we agree with it and embrace it wholeheartedly or we risk muddling along with a system that will underachieve in every aspect.