Tuesday, November 14, 2017

Pakistani Students Win Silver in International Genetic Engineering Competition

A team of undergraduate students representing Peshawar has won a silver medal in a genetic engineering competition organized recently by the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Foundation in Boston, Massachusetts.

Source: iGEM Peshawar Facebook Page


iGEM Team:

The team was made up of students from several cities and towns across Pakistan including Lahore, Attock, Islamabad, Multan, Faisalabad, Khyber Agency, Nowshera, Charsadda, Peshawar, Swabi and Mardan.

The team was hosted by Institute of Integrative Biosciences of CECOS University of IT and Emerging Sciences Peshawar. It was sponsored by Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP)’s Directorate of Science and Technology, according to media reports.

The team's silver-medal-winning 2017 entry is a genetically engineered fish called "Reporter Fish" that can detect five different heavy metals and change color to indicate the presence of metal contamination in the water. It used an Arduino electronic circuit board with bacterial-human interface device that enables bacteria to detect and report contamination.

The Peshawar team also participated in iGEM 2016 competition and won a Bronze medal. The 12-member team last year was made of 5 female and 7 male students.

Stanford Challenge:

Earlier this year, a 3-person team of Pakistani students, including a female student from Islamabad's National University of Science and Technology (NUST), won first place in a contest organized by Stanford Center of Longevity. The team's entry is a device they designed and prototyped that enables tremor patients to perform daily routine tasks.

Higher Education in Pakistan:

Wins such as the iGEM silver medal and the first place in Stanford Challenge are the result of improvements in higher education in Pakistan since the year 2000.

There are over 3 million students enrolled in grades 13 through 16 in Pakistan's 1,086 degree colleges and 161 universities, according to Pakistan Higher Education Commission report for 2013-14.  The 3 million enrollment is 15% of the 20 million Pakistanis in the eligible age group of 18-24 years.  In addition, there are over 255,000 Pakistanis enrolled in vocational training schools, according to Technical Education and Vocational Training Authority (TEVTA).

Graduation Day at NED Engineering University For 1300 Graduates in 2013
Pakistani universities have been producing over half a million graduates, including over 10,000 IT graduates, every year since 2010, according to HEC data. The number of university graduates in Pakistan increased from 380,773 in 2005-6 to 493,993 in 2008-09. This figure is growing with rising enrollment and contributing to Pakistan's growing human capital.

Source: UNESCO's Global Education Digest 2009






Higher education in Pakistan has come a long way since its independence in 1947 when there was only one university, the University of Punjab. By 1997, the number of universities had risen to 35, of which 3 were federally administered and 22 were under the provincial governments, with a combined enrollment of 71,819 students. A big spending boost by President Pervez Musharraf helped establish 51 new universities and awarding institutions during 2002-2008. This helped triple university enrollment from 135,000 in 2003 to about 400,000 in 2008, according to Dr. Ata ur Rehman who led the charge for expanding higher education during Musharraf years. There are 161 universities with 1.5 million students enrolled in Pakistan as of 2014.

R&D Investment: 

Rise of research and publications at Pakistani universities began during Musharraf years when the annual budget for higher education increased from only Rs 500 million in 2000 to Rs 28 billion in 2008, to lay the foundations of the development of a strong knowledge economy, according to former education minister Dr. Ata ur Rehman. Student enrollment in universities increased from 270,000 to 900,000 and the number of universities and degree awarding institutions increased from 57 in 2000 to 137 by 2008. Government R&D spending jumped seven-fold as percentage of GDP from 0.1% of GDP in 1999 to 0.7% of GDP in 2007. It has since declined as percentage of GDP.

Summary:

Pakistani students, scientists and researchers are continuing to produce highly recognized and cited research in spite of serious economic and security challenges. Enrollment in higher education is rising and giving a boost to innovation. With better policy focus and more investment in higher education, Pakistan  can make an even greater impact with its young demographics.

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Pakistan Beats BRICS in Highly Cited Research

Pakistan Becomes CERN Member

Pakistani Scientists at CERN

Rising College Enrollment in Pakistan

10 Pakistani Universities Among Asia's Top 300

Genomics and Biotech Research in Pakistan

Human Capital Growth in Pakistan

Educational Attainment in Pakistan

Pakistan Human Development in Musharraf Years

Robotics Growth in Pakistan 

9 comments:

Moon said...

Imagine our eduction system gets the investment as per the need and the wonders will be made by such brilliant minds.

Ravi said...

India featured in the Gold, Silver and Bronze list.

http://2017.igem.org/Results

Ahsan H. said...

Yay...this is awesome!

Anonymous said...

Anonymous Ravi said...
India featured in the Gold, Silver and Bronze list.

Actually, India featured only in Silver and Bronze.

G. Ali

Anonymous said...

@ G Ali

Look up IISc,Bangalore in the above link.It got a Gold.

Riaz Haq said...

Ravi: "India featured in the Gold, Silver and Bronze list. "

India is more than 6X population and has fielded a lot of more teams.

Pakistan fielded just one team, the same team, in both 2016 and 2017 and won a medal each time...`100% success rate.

Riaz Haq said...

125 #IT Jobs Just Moved From #Noida #Delhi #India To #Islamabad, #Pakistan. #Tech

https://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/noida-to-islamabad/299532

On the night of November 1, stretching into early next morning, close to half the workforce at the Noida office of a US-based IT service provider was informed that their services were no longer needed. A former employee says salaries for the staff at the Noida office were declared delayed by a day on October 31. The official explanation was that the servers were not working. “They weren’t clear about how many people were going to be laid off,” he says. The next night, they “axed 125 people in half-an-hour.” They all got a severance package—a cheque for October and another two months of salary—and a termination letter. Rumours of layoffs had started doing the rounds four to five months ago. The talk was that the company was opening offices in a neighbouring country.

Curiously, the day the workforce in Noida was sacked, almost the same number of employees for the same low-level IT-enabled jobs logged into their systems, 676 kilometres away, in Islamabad, Pakistan.
ob cuts have plagued the Indian IT sector for about two years now and have begun to get pretty serious from the start of this year. “Bloodbath in Bangalore” has been the recurring headline. But the trend of these jobs going to techies in Pakistan is more recent. Away from all the noise of ceasefire violations and surgical strikes, where Pakistan could really hurt India is in taking away low-end IT jobs. The neighbour has a budding IT industry, growing in its own space, looking to emulate the Indian IT success story where right now data operators and BPO callers come much cheaper.

Riaz Haq said...

Pakistan’s biggest Science Olympiad LUMS PsiFi set to kick off this Friday

https://www.techjuice.pk/pakistans-biggest-science-olympiad-lums-psifi-set-to-kick-off-this-friday/

The biggest science Olympiad of the country, PsiFi, which is hosted by the Lahore University of Management and Sciences’ Society for Promotion of Engineering and Sciences is set to start from tomorrow.

PsiFi is entering into its 9th edition, thus the name “PsiFi IX”. The first edition of the series gave LUMS the honour of being the pioneer of Science Olympiads in Pakistan. Since then, PsiFi has been held on an annual basis and each event promises a better experience than before.

SPADES’ executive body is determined to make this year’s event a success, putting in days and nights to ensure that the participants have an exhilarating start to the year. PsiFi consists of a bundle of science-oriented competitions. It revolves around 16 academic events and 4 socials spread over 4 days, starting from the 13th till the 16th of January, 2018.

SPADES quotes the drive to counter the narrative of science being a “boring” field as the root cause of the efforts to make Psifi a “Feast of Fun”. It has set out with all the right weapons required to convince everyone that science is fun and interesting.

The 16 academic events are spread over a wide array of backgrounds and are not confined to one branch of science. Some of them are:

See also: Upcoming Lahore Science Mela is all about blending science with culture

1. Diagnosis Dilemma
This event is based on 3 rounds, starting off from a Crisis scenario wherein participants will take up the role of a paramedic and try to counter the crisis situation, participants will put their surgical ability to test and pull out a tumor from a dummy without damaging internal organs.

2. Galactica
This event aims to bring out the Matt Damon in everyone and test their knowledge of space and planets. Nowadays, space travel and the possibility of people living on other planets is constantly being explored by governments and firms like SpaceX. Now, students have the chance to present their proposals in front of a learned judging panel. Galactica, where limits extend beyond the sky.

3. Geek Wars
This event is bound to exploit the movie and seasons knowledge of the participants. Based on 5 rounds, this event will bring out the sci-fi movie nerd inside everyone. The rounds will comprise of MCQs, riddles and dares, all of them aiming to bring the Sci-Fi element in Psifi!

4. Vine’d Up
This event is all about laughter, humor and the best thing in our lives: Memes! Based on 3 rounds in addition to a bonus round, this event will comprise of participants making memes out of images given to them and using imaginary gadgets in (hopefully) funny videos. This event promises to be one of the most enjoyable of the roster of events, and rightfully so. After all, what’s life without laughter, right?

Other than the academic events, Psifi will also host 4 social events including a concert which is bound to be the highlight of the event. Starting from the amazing opening ceremony all the way up to the Black and Gold themed Closing Dinner, the socials will be an amazing remedy for the stress from the academic events.

Riaz Haq said...

Top European Research Labs Select Three teams of Secondary school students-- One Each Netherlands, Pakistan and the US--For Own Accelerator Beam Experiments at CERN and DESY


https://home.cern/news/press-release/cern/three-teams-secondary-school-pupils-netherlands-pakistan-and-usa-win-10th


Geneva and Hamburg, 28 June 2023. In 2023, for the second time in the history of the Beamline for Schools competition, the evaluation committee selected three winning teams. The team “Myriad Magnets” from the Philips Exeter Academy, in Exeter, United States, and the team “Particular Perspective”, which brings together pupils from the Islamabad College for Boys, the Supernova School in Islamabad, the Cadet College in Hasanabdal, the Siddeeq Public School in Rawalpindi and the Cedar College in Karachi, Pakistan, will travel to CERN, Geneva, in September 2023 to perform the experiments that they proposed. The team “Wire Wizards” from the Augustinianum school in Eindhoven, Netherlands, will be hosted at DESY (Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron in Hamburg, Germany) to carry out its experiment.


Beamline for Schools (BL4S) is a physics competition open to secondary school pupils from all around the world. The participants are invited to prepare a proposal for a physics experiment that can be undertaken at the beamline of a particle accelerator. A beamline is a facility that provides high-energy fluxes of subatomic particles that can be used to conduct experiments in different fields, including fundamental physics, material science and medicine.

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“Congratulations to this year’s winners – may they have good beams, collect interesting data and generally have the time of their lives,” says Christoph Rembser, a CERN physicist at the ATLAS experiment and one of the founders of Beamline for Schools. “Every year I am astonished by how many young people submit very creative, interesting proposals. In 2014, we weren’t sure at all whether this competition would work. Ten years and 16 000 participants later, I am proud to say that it is obviously a resounding success.”

The fruitful collaboration between CERN and DESY started in 2019 during the shutdown period of the CERN accelerators. This year, the German laboratory will host its fifth team of winners.


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The Pakistan team “Particular Perspective” will measure in detail the beam composition of the T10 beamline of the CERN Proton Synchrotron accelerator. The experiment set-up they designed will make it possible to differentiate between different particle species and measure their intensity.

“I am grateful to BL4S for having provided me with an opportunity to represent my country, Pakistan, and its budding community of aspiring physicists. This is a chance for us to experience physics at the highest level and will inspire people with interests similar to ours to reach greater heights,” says Muhammad Salman Tarar from the “Particular Perspective” team.

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The “Wire Wizards” team’s experiment focuses on detector development. The Dutch students designed and built a multi-wire proportional chamber (MWPC), a gas detector able to measure the position of a particle interacting with it, and they plan to characterise it using the electron beam available at DESY.

“The BL4S competition provides us with a unique educational experience that will be a highlight in our time as students,” says Leon Verreijt from the “Wire Wizards” team.

The winners have been selected by a committee of CERN and DESY scientists from a shortlist of 27 particularly promising experiments. All the teams in the shortlist will be awarded special prizes. In addition, one team will be recognised for the most creative video and 10 teams for the quality of physics outreach activities they are organising in their local communities, taking advantage of the knowledge gained by taking part in BL4S.