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Formation of startups and new companies
Commercial exploitation of science, technology, and novelty
System of laws, regulations, strategies, and funding priorities
Discovery and creation of new knowledge of the natural world
Application of new knowledge towards useful social ends
By: Athar Osama, Adil Najam, Shamsh Kassim-Lakha, Zulfikar Gilani and Christopher King
Published in Nature on Sept 3, 2009
In 2002, Pakistan began an ambitious overhaul of its higher-education system. The successes and failures of the experience hold lessons for other countries, say Athar Osama and co-authors.
After decades of neglect, in 2002 Pakistan set out to dramatically reform its higher-education system. The reforms were designed to reverse years of chronic underfunding, to invest in the academic workforce and to revitalize a moribund research enterprise.
The article is not available in full text except to subscribers and others with access to academic journals. However, Adil Najam - one of the co-authors - has written a summary and excerpts which is posted below from Pakistaniat.com:
By: Ehsan Masood
Published in SciDev.Net on 23 March 2006
The Islamic world’s scientific agency is on a path to reform. Ehsan Masood assesses the obstacles on the road ahead.
Across the Muslim world, the controversy over newspaper cartoons of the prophet Mohammad was reaching a peak. I was heading to Pakistan for a meeting of science ministers on 21 February. At my starting point in Cairo, Egypt, riot police had surrounded the Al Azhar mosque, keeping a close watch on an otherwise peaceful demonstration after Friday prayers.
In Pakistan, demonstrations in several cities had ended in violence. Now the capital Islamabad was under pressure, with religious leaders plan...
By: Mohamad Abdalla
Published at: The Free Library (here)
Recent studies in the history of Islamic science illustrate that Islam’s contributions were richer and more profound than was previously thought. In their attempt to provide answers to what happened to Islamic science after the eleventh century, historians and scholars construct a simplified model that describes all branches of Islamic science in terms of failure. In this article, Ibn Khaldnn’s analysis of the fate of Islamic science will be examined to show his insightful understanding of, and the failure of scholars in, understanding what happened.
Dominant Understanding: the Decline Theory
The e...
By: Athar Osama
Published in DinarStandard.com
Scientific and technological research and innovation is not among the qualities that one may attribute to the countries in the Muslim World. Having missed the dawn of scientific age due to reasons beyond the scope of this article, the 50-odd countries of the Islamic world cut a sorry figure when stacked against the modern and advanced countries of the West or even, for that matter, the states of the former Soviet Union and the under-developed India or China.
Yet, science and technology remains the single most important factor that distinguishes the economic leaders and laggards of today. Science and Technology—from the bas...
By: Athar Osama
Published in DinarStandard.com, July 2006
In the 1980s and 1990s, Silicon Valley propelled the world into the computer and internet age and, in the process, captivated the world’s imagination as a model region for organizing economic and innovative activity. Since then, leaders around the world have tried to create economic clusters—their own versions of Silicon Valleys—around the world in an attempt to replicate “Silicon Valley Phenomenon” in their own backyards.
Economic Clusters: An Age-old Phenomenon Revitalized
To be sure, the phenomenon on economic and technology clusters is not new. Economic clusters date back at least to the great Hellen...
By: Athar Osama
Published on SciDev.Net on 15 December 2011
Arab Spring revolutionaries turning to governance must adopt knowledge and innovation as barometers for progress, says Athar Osama.
As revolutions swept countries and shook governments across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region this year, they created opportunities for greater public voice in governance. Tunisia, for example, recently went through an election, and the Egyptian people are in the process of electing an assembly whose job is to write a new constitution.
And as revolutionaries turn to governance, they will have to address the socioeconomic and cultural challenges facing ten...
By: Frank Lehner
Published in Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy on 30 August 2011.
The idea of generating solar energy on a large scale in the sun-intensive countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) to satisfy their own increasing energy demand and to export surplus energy to Europe as advocated in the DESERTEC concept1 has publicly received much attention in some countries, particularly in Germany, Morocco, Tunisia, and also substantial support from their governments. Besides the DESERTEC Foundation, an industrial consortium (Dii GmbH) was founded in 2009 which consists of major European and MENA companies to push this project further b...
By: Dr. Athar Osama
Muslim-Science.Com met with Tan Sri Dr. Omar Abdur Rahman, Mahathir’s Science Advisor for over a decade and half and, the “prime mover” behind Mahathir Mohammed’s vision of a Knowledge-driven Malaysia. A deeply humble man, Tan Sri Omar insists that Mahathir was a science policymaker par excellence in his own right and that he would hardly have needed a science advisor. However, he played a critical role in providing scientific credibility to Mahathir’s plans and helping the Prime Minister reach out to the scientific community to build support for his policies.
As Malaysia’s first and longest serving Science Advisor – a position t...
