Promoting Research in Pakistan: A Few Ideas

re: Medical research in India
India, i think, is becoming a place for drug research by pharmaceutical companies. Drug research costs a lot of money and it takes any big pharma company upwards of 200 million dollars to introduce a new drug into the market. India is now being seen as a place where this cost can be cut down. India has cheap chemists, PhDs etc who can do the leg work for these companies.
But cutting edge research in Medicine is non-existent in India. Indian hospitals and research centers are not into collaborative multicentric trials. I attended a conference in my speciality sometime ago in Washington D.C and there was this guy from Bangalore, India who presented some case studies. The idea was novel and he had some good things to say but then his data lacked the weightage and did not get the deserved attention because it was case study. The idea of doing RCTs has not somehow caught on in India. This is what the rest of the world does. I see a lot of papers from China, few from India.
So, India has a long way to go before it can catch up with developed countries of the world in terms of medical research. I must confess i know next to nothing about research in IT and allied areas. It seems India is forging ahead in these areas.
Sridhar

Charlie...

Let me also add, it is not just the top level research that is happening in India,
the good thing is that the ordinary villager is trying to improve little things that
makes life better....
check out www.goodnewsindia.com
These million little changes happening in India are what will make it a great society again.

And you know what ? Learn more about Indias hoary scientific traditions here
www.indianscience.org

Charlie,

Here`s just a sample....

India special: The silicon subcontinent
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/info-tech/mg18524871.100

India special: The next knowledge superpower
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/mg18524876.800

India`s R&D: Reaching for the Top
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/307/5714/1415

http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=117878

Agere adds India design center
http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=Q3S5U4VJ3RUPQQSNDBCSKHSCJUMEKJVN

AIIMS pioneers stem cell injection
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1031528.cms

tits on a bull ...........

research without development is like tits on a bull - it is something only the us government can afford to do with tax-payers money ................ everyone else, including companies like gm, ge, pfizer, j&j, p&g mandate that 75-80% of their research money is charged to specific product development efforts - they don`t pay people to write the same paper four times over to present at ten different conferences all over the world !........... those days of phd`s in white coats sitting around at bell labs and gmr developing routing algorithms and wiper blades are long gone ........... now you have to earn your next research dollar ...........

............ the john welch technology centre in bangalore with its 2500 scientists and engineers already has more than 200 patents in 4 years - a 100m dollars well spent .......... pakistan couldn`t muster 250 scientists of that caliber unless they emptied krl and pinstech and even if we did, what would they work on ?........

........... we pakistanis need to get a grip on reality - first we were talking about jumping into the post-industrial age by getting into it and bpo, and now we are talking about doing research ............. research on what ?....... the mating habits of the cotton bo-weevil !............ that has already been done at texas a&m funded with millions of dollars by the usda ! ..............harnessing jinns to produce electricity ? ........ it would be better to fix wapda instead with some old fashioned engineering and proper management ................ we need to walk before we can run ..........

#42

If you meet a TI guy ask them what they do in Bangalore, you may be quite surprised :-)

#42

There is little research, but there is quite a bit of interesting development work ongoing in embedded systems:

http://www.sasken.com/products/overview.html
http://www.ittiam.com/pages/products/products.htm

Re: # 42

charlie mian,

.......... all this idle talk about research in pakistan is amusing and rather silly when we still have to master the basic 3 r`s - reading, riting and rithmetic !......... and let`s not fool ourselves by comparing ourselves to india - they are in a different league altogether .......... take a look :

http://www.jfwtc.ge.com/

Re: # 39

JG! That`s exactly what I meant. People have a natural tendency to be more helpful for the ones who belong to their similar background. Certainly, Pakistani professor had a soft corner for a student coming from his background.

One another serious note, atleast in my area of research, I am unable to find a single place in India where ``good research`` is being done. In Pakistan, situation is even worse where even ``bad research`` is also not being done. On the other hand, I have just come to know a billion dollar european plan of competing with US ans specially `dangerouisly improving` chinese technology in the field of embedded systems. China was the only country last year who improved its infrastructure significantly in silicon fabrication. While eaést asian countries have already got a front seat in embedded system business,South Korea in more anxiously implementing is 2010 project to become the leading technology provider in the field. Lookig a these intiatives by these countries, it seems very bad if people coming from sub-continent fight for a little they have achieved or for arguing about their achievemnts. It is not the race between Pakistan and India. Frankly speaking, we are among the last ones in the race (Pakistan lagging even more). And then we fight....

Oye Veh!
Bhagwan ki Panah,
Your guys are bickering at such inconsequential points.
Instead of engaging in constructive discussion, some of you jab at each other with impunity.

Charlie,
I believe that the solution is very simple. Just put in a few quality graduate programs focusing on basic science and engineering. No need to run after some fad of the day. I mean just Masters Level programs, which graduate students who actually understand the basics..like really understand. Fund the students completely with small stipend. Research will happen kinda automatically..and even if it dose not, the fundamental focus will pay..kind of talibanist approach.

Before masters can paint inspired paintings, they always toil practicing basic brushwork and anatomy.

Re. Lobbying at the universities:
Actually, when my brother in law applied for grad course at Georgia Tech, he was helped out not by an Indian but a Pakistani professor.

#28 by irfanhamid
//...When will you guys learn that not all of us Pakistanis are out for `Hindu` blood? ...//

When you pakis stop sponsoring jihad against the hinuds. That`s when.

Re: # 36

How did you discovered author`s intentions... Some divine guidance??? Or feeling of insecurity coming out of some sort of complex???

#28 by irfanhamid on March 16, 2005 6:41pm PT


You consummate paranoid twit, Cheema is actually paying Indians a compliment :)


Nope...he was just being..well.. a paki...the implicaiton was obvious...If Indian students do well, it`s because the profs are Indian....

bbabu #20 got it right. an IIT-alumnus prof will look for and hire students from IIT because he knows they are the amongst the best in the world. similarly, he will be willing to hire students from METU, Turkey. The point here is that most of the research work and publication are done by the graduate students and a prof can indulge in indiscriminate nepotism only at his peril. a prof worth his tenure will not hire an indian student from osmania univ over a chinese student from mit.
having said that, it is also true that indiscriminate nepotism does take place in lower-ranked univs.

bbabu #20 got it right. an IIT-alumnus prof will look for and hire students from IIT because he knows they are the amongst the best in the world. similarly, he will be willing to hire students from METU, Turkey. The point here is that most of the research work and publication are done by the graduate students and a prof can indulge in indiscriminate nepotism only at his peril. a prof worth his tenure will not hire an indian student from osmania univ over a chinese student from mit.
having said that, it is also true that indiscriminate nepotism does take place in lower-ranked univs.