powered by
Ticket Bar
Ticket Bar
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 Murtaza Haider, Published at Dawn.Com on November 2, 2011
A recent public opinion poll revealed that the top-most research priority areas identified by Pakistanis included Chemistry, Urdu literature, Islamic studies, Arabic, Botany and Zoology. Those who responded to the survey asked of Pakistani academics to devote their energies on the above-mentioned research areas and requested the governments to fund additional research in Chemistry and other basic sciences.
You are not alone in wondering how you missed seeing the results of this critical opinion poll in which Pakistanis identified research priority areas for the nation. In fact, no such poll exists. But what exists is a list of 7,151 Ph.D. dissertations completed since independence in Pakistan, which shows that most frequent research subjects included Chemistry, Urdu literature, Islamic studies, Arabic, Botany and Zoology.
The following graph is a pictorial representation of the subject areas used to categorise the 7,151 doctoral dissertations. The size of each subject area is in proportion to how frequently it appeared in the list thus revealing Chemistry and other basic sciences along with Islamic studies and Urdu being the most common research areas for doctoral dissertations in Pakistan. Education and agronomy are rare examples of frequent research topics that address immediate needs in Pakistan.
By Athar Osama
Published in SciDev.Net on 3 December 2010 | EN
Reforms of science and higher education must deliver results to gain support of society, says science policy specialist Athar Osama.
Excellence in higher education and scientific research is not generally attributed to contemporary Muslim societies. For centuries, Muslims have gone through an equivalent of Europe’s Dark Ages and have longed for the dawning of another golden age of science.
In recent years, fresh resolve in a number of Islamic countries has seen them take steps to close the wide gap between Muslim countries and the developed world.
Several Mu...
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. H...
Nature: Editoria: Cash costs
Nature 461, 11-12 (3 September 2009) | doi:10.1038/461011b; Published online 2 September 2009
Massive funding for Pakistan’s ailing universities holds many lessons for other developing nations.
Eight years ago, a task force advising Pakistan’s former military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, laid out a bold plan to revitalize the country’s moribund research system: initiate a fivefold increase in public funding for universities, with a special emphasis on science, technology and engineering. The proposal was a radical departure from conventional wisdom on the economics of developing nations, which favours incremental inv...
By: Athar Osama
Over the last several years of the current government, the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC) has funded thousands of scholarships and fellowships for Pakistanis to do PhD and Post-Doctoral work both at home and abroad. Almost simultaneously, it has also instituted an ambitious Foreign Faculty Hiring Program (FFHP) to attract expatriate Pakistanis working in the developed countries to return to Pakistan on a temporary basis to teach at Pakistani universities. The purpose of all these programs has been to dramatically increase the number of PhD degree holders in Pakistan and to encourage talented Pakistanis to return back to their homeland, hop...
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...
