Comments on: Pakistan a ‘Rising Star’ in Research: ScienceWatch

By: Salman Asghar

Salman Asghar — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 05:16:20 +0000

@Yasir
NUST isn’t Ranking some where???
The only university in Pakistan in top 400 of world!

By: Yasir

Yasir — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 07:24:50 +0000

thanks for the reply…i have interest in doing metallurgy and material sciences but the only thing that stops me from making the choice is the fact that there are very few jobs in pakistan at the moment and the in the few jobs that are available mechanical engineers take the places instead of metallurgical eng.As far as Fast is concerned it only offers subdiciplines of elec eng. in two areas that are Telecom and computers(not power and electronics)…

By: Ahmed Jawad

Ahmed Jawad — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 11:52:05 +0000

I think participant countries for this survey should be required to have a minimum volume of publications in an area. Anyways, its interesting. No matter how small a ray of hope, its still there.

By: Omar

Omar — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 02:12:00 +0000

The only advice I can give you is that you should not decide your major based on these rankings. These rankings are fickle and will change from year to year. I think you should base your decision on, i) what you will like to do, ii) where do you see yourself in 10 years, 20 years …

By: Yasir

Yasir — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 11:39:07 +0000

I am in a kind of confusion…I have got admission in materials and metallurgical engineering at GIKI and in electrical eng. in FAST…seeing material sciences in rising star category made the decision even more difficult. Where should i go? Kindly reply to my query.

By: Khurram Shafique

Khurram Shafique — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:19:32 +0000

I agree that developing industry to consume and/or spur research is critical for creating a sustainable research environment in the country. One way the ongoing research can be leveraged to accomplish this task is by providing incentives to entrepreneurs, who can transition this research to the industry and turn it into products or services. This will require quite a bit of infrastructure and policy development, however there are some new initiatives, such as National ICT R&D fund, that are currently trying to accomplish this task.

Regarding the relevance of research to local industry, I do not think that academia should be explicitly bounded by constraints to perform locally relevant research. There are many examples of great scientific and technological accomplishments that were not motivated to solve problems of any industry and rather were the result of intellectual curiosity of the inventor(s). Adding constraints would only limit the intellectual freedom that is a necessary ingredient for scientific discovery and has been an important characteristic of academia. I believe that given the right incentives to both academia and industry along with the policies for transparency, oversight, and IP right protections, etc., the research will itself get aligned with the local needs.

By: Imran

Imran — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 10:43:54 +0000

I am curious about the relationship of this research to the Pakistani industry. So far, this so-called research is just bringing good name to Pakistan without any material results. Any new theorems which might have been developed do not have any direct relevance to industry in Pakistan.

Engineering has been cited as one of the emerging areas of research. However, there is not much engineering industry so to say. Should not we first focus to build an engineering industry, then do the needful research to solve problems for this industry?

By: Ahmed

Ahmed — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 07:33:19 +0000

Pakistan is a future leader in Research!

By: Omar Javed

Omar Javed — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 17:12:02 +0000

The have a computer science dept. also.

By: Sohaib Khan

Sohaib Khan — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 07:22:06 +0000

QAU has an Electronics Department, which will be counted in ‘Engineering’ in their database.