Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Pak Software Prodigy's Inspirational Legacy

Arfa Karim Randhawa passed away at the tender age of just 16. Inna Lillah Wa Inna Elaih Rajeon!

Born in 1995, she achieved celebrity status after becoming the world's youngest computer expert at the age of 9, passing a tough series of Microsoft tests designed for software professionals. Her success brought her an invitation to Microsoft headquarters in Seattle, where she met its chairman, Bill Gates, and discussed her idea for a self-navigating car in 2005.



She spent the last month of her short life in a Lahore hospital after reportedly suffering an epileptic seizure and cardiac arrest. Two weeks ago her prognosis appeared to improve. In recent weeks, Microsoft stepped in to help provide expert medical care.

Todd Bishop, a Seattle-based newspaper reporter covering her Redmond visit, wrote about her as follows: "She made an impression through a combination of charm, flattery and boldness uncommon for someone her age. For example, during Arfa’s meeting with Gates, she presented him with a poem she wrote that celebrated his life story. But she also questioned him about what she perceived to be the relatively small proportion of women on the campus."

When a younger 9-year-old Indian girl M. Lavinashree broke her record a few years ago by becoming the youngest Microsoft Software professional, Bishop told Arfa about it and got the following response from her:

“This is the first time I’ve seen this story. But I must say that I’m really happy to have read it. This is exactly what I had been wishing for ever since I got to bring laurels for my country. I am very glad to see that people are following what I did and have succeeded in beating me. I don’t know whether you’ve heard or not but a boy, named Bilal, from Gujranwala in Pakistan also became a Microsoft Certified Professional at the age of nine. I would say that the other youngsters should follow suit, thereby convincing the people to take us kids seriously. Our generation is very talented and so should be promoted.”

Arfa's untimely death at such a young age is a tragic loss for her family and for Pakistan. Her legacy, however, will live on. I hope and expect that many more Lavinashrees and Bilals will be inspired by her memory to accomplish whatever they set their mind to, including but not limited to achieving celebrity as Microsoft professionals.

Here's a video clip of Arfa Karim's Interview:



Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Pakistan's Demographic Dividend

Pakistani Software Expert Helps Fight Terror

Pakistan IT Industry

Pakistan Leads Asia in Biometric IT Services

Pakistanis Studying Abroad

Pakistan Working Women

Quality of Higher Education in India and Pakistan

Developing Pakistan's Intellectual Capital

Intellectual Wealth of Nations

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

God bless America for the technology we use in our daily lives. Also God bless Bill Gates also for showing compassion.

Anonymous said...

SAD HOW SUCH PEOPLE HAVE SUCH SHORT LIVES AND THE mullahs and other trouble makers have such long ones!!

Anonymous said...

Lovely article we have really lost a beautiful soul.

Hope to hear some news about economic health of Pakistan which is not all well i hear. Whats your opinion?

sanaahamed said...

We all love you Arfa Karim. She is the biggest lost for her parents and the whole nation.

Riaz Haq said...

Here's a Toronto Star story of a Pakistani and Chinese Canadian kids space flight using a lego man with a balloon:

Two Canadian teenagers have sent a Lego man into space using a home-stitched parachute and spare parts found on Craigslist.

Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad, both 17, attached the two-inch astronaut clutching a Canadian flag to a helium weather balloon, which they sent 80,000 feet into the air - three times the height of a commercial jet's cruising altitude.

The pair managed to capture the entire 97 minute journey which began on a football pitch in Toronto using four cameras set to take photos every 20 seconds, reports the Toronto Star.

They were left with astonishing footage from an estimated 24 kilometres above sea level which showed the toy floating above the curvature of our planet before beginning a 32 minute descent back to earth.

The personal project cost the boys $400 and took four months of free Saturdays, reports the Star.

Having attached a GPS receiver to the styrofoam box carrying the cameras and Lego man, the teens were able to recover their Lego man which landed 122km from the launch site.

When the teens got home and uploaded the two videos and 1,500 photos onto a computer, they told the Star that they started screaming with joy.

Their footage shows the Lego man spinning at an altitude three times higher than the peak of Mount Everest, before the balloon bursts and he starts to plummet.

“We never knew it would be this good,” Ho told the Star.

According to the report, the two students met in middle school after Muhammad's family had just emigrated from Pakistan.

Muhammad, who spoke no English, was soon befriended by Ho and they began working on the project at Ho's house last September.

"People would walk into the house and see us building this fantastical thing with a parachute from scratch, and they would be like, 'What are you doing?', We'd be like, 'We're sending cameras to space.' They'd be like, 'Oh, okayyyyy …' Ho told the Star.

Astrophysics professor Dr Michael Reid, from the University of Toronto, praised the boys' work, telling the Star: "It shows a tremendous degree of resourcefulness. For two 17-year-olds to accomplish this on their own is pretty impressive."


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2092501/Lego-astronaut-makes-debut-space-help-Mathew-Ho-Asad-Muhammad.html#ixzz1kpIl8PF4

Riaz Haq said...

Here's Huffington Post on Pakistan's new youngest Microsoft professional:

Qualifying to be a "Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist" is an impressive achievement regardless of one's age, but now a Pakistani boy named Shafay Thobani can boast having checked it off his to-do list at the tender age of 8, the Daily Mail and the UK's Sun newspaper are reporting.

According to Shafay's personal website -- likely managed by adults, as it makes heavy use of the phrase "the child" to describe his training and accomplishments -- he started working with computers when he was just 4 years old.

At the age of 7, Shafay started training to pass the exams necessary to become a Microsoft expert. Doing so meant 13 months on a strict schedule that involved attending school from 7:30 in the morning to 1:30 in the afternoon, followed by computer classes at his father's office from 2:30 to 8:30 p.m.

Becasue Shafay's father is Shah Thobani, the CEO of Thobson Technologies in Karachi, the boy had access to a 1,000 square foot training space featuring three desktops, switches, routers and laptops.

Despite all those hours of work, Shafay's father and the staff who trained him didn't lose track of that fact that the boy is only 8. There was a dedicated area for chess, darts and arcade games.

All that rigorous studying appears to have paid off though, with Shafay reportedly achieving a score of 91 percent.

“I feel like the luckiest parent because at the end of each day I only ever receive very positive feedback from Shafay’s teachers," Shah Thobani was quoted as saying in the Sun. “Every year I give Shafay a new challenge to try and encourage him."


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/18/shafay-thobani-8-year-old_n_1684186.html

Riaz Haq said...

Here's a Dawn report on Pakistani student winning International Computer Olympiad:

A Pakistani student from Balochistan has bagged gold medal in an international contest held in Turkmenistan leaving all the countries like Germany, Canada, Russia, England, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka behind.

M. Ubaidullah son of Haji Talib Din, a rice trader, is a class ninth student of Pak-Turk International Schools and Colleges, has brought home a gold medal from the International Computer Project Olympiad (ICPO) held in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.

The competition was held on September 14 and 15 among students from 45 countries who presented 150 projects in the Olympiad.

Ubaidullah’s project that caught attention of participants, organisers and judges was regarding plant automation system; subsequently he was awarded 1st position in the hardware category.

His project P-Bot aims at saving plants in cold-flame or greenhouse setting, especially when someone wants to protect the plants at home in all the seasons. P-Bot automates the round-the-year tasks of plant care by means of its full-automatic cold flame and greenhouse routines.


http://dawn.com/2012/09/22/pakistani-student-wins-gold-medal/

Riaz Haq said...

Here's Gulf News on a planned model village named after Arfa Karim:

Islamabad: Authorities in Pakistan are planning to build a model village in honour of late Arfa Karim, an information technology genius who at nine years became the world’s youngest Microsoft Certified Professional.

Arfa’s ancestral village in Punjab, Ramdewali Chak No 4, will be soon developed into a model village at a cost of Rs140 million (Dh52 million) the Associated Press of Pakistan reported.

A monument will be built at her grave, and a library and a museum will also be established within the model village.

“She deserves to be honoured by the entire nation forever,” the APP quoted a government spokesman as saying.

The village will have a girls’ degree college, a technical training centre, a basic health unit, a playground, improved drainage scheme, paved streets, provision of portable water and agriculture equipment.

Arfa died in January 2012, aged 16, after complications resulting from an epileptic stroke and cardiac arrest.

She rose to international fame when she became the youngest Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) at the age of nine in 2005. She was subsequently invited to visit the Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, by founder Bill Gates.

She received the Fatimah Jinnah Gold Medal in the field of science and technology in 2005, and was also the recipient of the President’s Award for Pride of Performance.

In 2006, she was invited by Microsoft to be a part of a conference in Barcelona. She was the only Pakistani among over 5,000 developers in that conference, the Daily Mail reported.


http://gulfnews.com/news/world/pakistan/pakistan-plans-model-village-to-honour-it-wizkid-1.1129557

Douglas Gomez said...

Such a disheartening loss. The online community lost a protege with a potential to be a master iphone application developer or even an executive of her own software company.