Prioritizing Science and Technology

Cool. I didn`t know Aman interacted on here as well. But now that I`ve read Topatakesingh`s profile and seen his email address for IMAG I`m convinced. Well let`s make it at Chateau d`Eau around the 25th or 26th, right now I am up to my neck in projects and exams.

Oh and by the way, I have been a member here long before Aman showed up (or maybe he changed his nick ;)). Anyways I`ve been dormant recently, for no good reason. Khair, time to wake up.

Regards,
Irfan.

PS: J`ai marre de cette putain de pays, je veux rentrer au Pakistan, il me manque beaucoup :( et Aman si tu lit ça je t`invite à Paris pour un weekend en juillet, on va visiter des bordels y plus connus.

Wow! Seems that whole SFERE 2003 Batch is present on this forum. I am surprised. First it was Aman and now it is one and only ``Faana``. :)

Well! When are you giving me a treat at Lahori restaurant of Chateau d`eau Or should I come to ENST this weekend. ;)

Thanks for liking the article. As entioned by Aman and you! I will try to refine it to present it in VTTP.

Cheemay,

Great article. And I agree, you should refine it into a policy paper for the VTTP. A treat at the Pakistani restaurant if you can guess who I am.

Regards,
Irfan.

Good suggestions!

Actually, doing research/establishing research in computer related applied areas is really simple. Let me demonstrate by an example.

Take a problem e.g. Satellite based communication.
Get faculty to define the problem.
Break it into multiple areas and start putting together a simulation porgram using existing technologies. Use students pursuing thesis options to write these programs.
Once its ready, see what areas can have improvements,
Take it to manufacturers, advertize it on the web, and they will show-up for using your lab for trying out stuff, and recommending specific research areas, and giving money.

So, its trivial, and costs no money or gods inspiration. Several programs even in venerable institutes like Berkeley (chip-simulators), MIT (athena) and IITs (fixed-cellular lab at IIT Madras, got funded later by Analog Devices) were started on this model.

Offcourse this is down-and dirty work, takes no more than a couple of years to establish.

Indeed, if we are to change we must get our priorities right. I would like to comment on the part pertaining to the academia, which i believe is the grass root level. I study at one of the reputable institution in Pakistan. Here we have a complete operational R&D department, but the objective is missing altogether. I’m yet to see their single paper published in any research journal. I find it very hard to see the projects that they`ve been working on as research projects. We must learn what projects can be categorized as research projects. Most of our R&D departments have been doing is what one intellectual correctly puts ``RE-SEARCH`` i.e. ``YAAR, TRY ANOTHER SEARCH PHRASE, TRY SOME OTHER ENGINE, SEARCH AGAIN!``. The element of originality is missing altogether. What I have observed, in quite a lot of universities, Faculty, as you`ve rightly pointed out, are here in the university so that they live an easy life. I have observed many a teachers doing absolutely nothing while they are free, they are literally staring walls! They don’t even put efforts to polish their own teaching skills. They must realize the importance of their time to their country. They are the ones who are the architects of our academic structure. I and my groups were willing to do R&D work in one of the advance technologies of the time “The Grid Computing”. When we sought the support to start research in the area, we received positive response from abroad i.e. the people associated with ``The CERN`` who are the leading players in the field. These people were willing to assist us in starting some project. We were given hopes by more than one local university to play part in it. But afterwards we were let down by their lethargic efforts to begin. The problems did not only have to do with the faculty but also with the non-existing collaborative research infrastructure. The project never started due to the undue politics in the system. The end before the beginning did not only disappointed us but it also let down the people willing to support from the abroad. This is, we believe, one of many such “never started” research opportunities which delineate our flippant attitude towards the R&D. Such failures leave terrible impressions on people who are willing to invest for the growth of our academia, we must learn from these mistakes. We really need to put the politics out of our academic circle.
Ali

Omer,

Firstly, great article... I suggest you use this as a base for the policy paper contest at the HEC.
Secondly, women actualky do a helluva lot of work in Pakistan. It doesn`t get paid, but it`s work nevertheless - in addition to household chores, I believe most of the cotton-picking in southern Punjab and northern Sindh is done by women... similarly, I wouldn`t be surprised if they contributed elsewhere on the farm.

Thirdly, I`m re-posting this from the research network group; the maximum number of pakistani cs departments should ask for a donation. We badly need just this kind of bibliographic resource.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

SIGMOD/VLDB DIGITAL LIBRARY DONATION PROGRAM

http://pike.ewha.ac.kr/sigmod-dvd

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

ACM SIGMOD and the VLDB Foundation have established a joint program
to donate database literature to universities in developing countries,
with the goal of assisting in the expansion of the database community
in those countries. Currently available literature includes
SIGMOD`s Silver Edition and the SIGMOD 2003 DiSC, both on DVDs.
The Silver Edition is a comprehensive collection of 30 years of
database research literature and related materials; the complete
table of contents for the Silver Edition can be found at
http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/anthology.html.
The 2003 DiSC contains the proceedings of many database research
conferences that took place in 2002, plus database research
journal issues from that year and other related materials; see
http://sigmod.discgenesis.net/ for the complete table of contents.

A request for a donation should be made by visiting our website
(http://pike.ewha.ac.kr/sigmod-dvd) and filling out an application
form. An explicit designation that the applicant agrees to the
rules is required. The rules are as follows.

(1) The donated material is for the use by all patrons of the
recipient library.
(2) The library will make the donated material available for
reference/limited circulation to the patrons.
(3) The library will take all conventionally accepted steps to
abide by the copyright restrictions on the material.

Note that the donations will be made according to the following criteria.

(1) Donations will be made to libraries in universities in developing
and undeveloped countries according to their UN classification.
(2) Donations to universities in developed countries will be made
only in the context of demonstrated need, at a lower priority.
(3) Only one packet per University library will be donated.
(4) Graduate degree awarding departments and universities will get
priority over non-graduate degree awarding departments and
universities.

*** Requests will be processed in the order in which they arrive.
*** To apply for the 2-DVD Silver Anthology set and the SIGMOD 2003 DiSC,
please visit http://pike.ewha.ac.kr/sigmod-dvd and
fill out an application form.

---

Digital Library Donation Program Co-Directors

Amr El Abbadi
Department of Computer Science
University of Califormia
Santa Barbara, CA 93106 U.S.A.
amr@cs.ucsb.edu

Myung Kim
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Ewha Womans University
Seoul 120-750, Korea
mkim@ewha.ac.kr

Yes, Ravi. I am the Omer Cheema. Nice to meet you:)

B Z Isphahani! I suggested research work on theoratical aspects because it costs less. Imagine, doing research for algorithms of load balancing of parallel processors will require no money but a few computers (A small lab at the maximum) which our universities already have. On the contrary, imagine an electronics lab requiring a state of the art hardware costing 5000 Dollars and nobody is wiling to buy such a lab that hardware as it is ``expensive``. Whole point to be made was that there is not too much needed to start a research (for many fields). Only required thing is passion and dedication towards it.

You are right, mass manufacturing should be done. and may be, government should educate the people aware of the fact that how they can start a home business with a little amount of money. Our 50 percent of population (women) doesn`t work. Many men keep on searching for low paid jobs. May be, if government establishes technical traning schools and tell them how the technicians can involve themselves in their own businesses, we can, utilise our useless resources (jobless and women). But I feel that research stuff doesn`t come into the scene in SME based mass manufacturing industry.

Either research is done by Universities/ government run research organizations or by multinationals involved in state of the art hi-tech industry.

Hi Charlie/Omer (#6)

Communications was the thrust area in my masters. Right now I am working for a well known communications company in san diego, my profile is a bit old. BTW, are you Omer Cheema, the author of this article ? :)

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

Ravi! You are right. For people of sub-continent, it is the actual time to define their priorities. With the rapidly changing world, we need to adopt ourselves with the same acceleration. Science and technology is the key to success in the modern world and no nation can win a respectable status without having extra-ordinarily strong infrastructure of it. We need to realize this fact and concentrate all of our efforts to it. Our other problems will be automatically solved.

BTW, I just saw your profile. So, you are an MSc Student of EE. What are your specific areas of interest? I mean, in which area you plan to pursue your PhD?

Regards,
Omer

What beauty?

Sir: The much hyped and publicised Ms Universe contest, which was held in Puerto Rico last week, turned out to be a complete fiasco. Right from the beginning it lacked what it needed in order to be a classy show. The host left a lot to be desired. The judges also appeared to lack the expertise they needed for the occasion.

Above all the formatting of the show was pathetic. And to top it all, the crowned Miss Universe hardly deserved the title. It seems that the only consideration for judging the contents was the US-led war in Iraq and since Australia is a great supporter of the US, they were rewarded. Or perhaps what it really boiled down to was that the judges just didn’t know the meaning of ‘beauty’
DR SHAUKAT MAHMOOD
Lahore

And Reply:

Conspiracy theory and Ms Universe

Sir: This is with reference to Dr Shaukat Mahmood’s letter, “What beauty?” (Letters, Daily Times, June 7). While I understand the animosity that US policies elicit within Pakistan, I cannot fathom why Dr Mahmood blames the US government for rigging the Miss Universe contest just because the contestant Dr Mahmood was rooting for did not win.

Personally, I cannot imagine Rummy sitting in his Pentagon office coming up with strategies for rigging a beauty contest. I am sure the secretary of defense has more important issues on his mind. And for what it’s worth, I thought Miss Australia was quite good looking.
TAIMUR M KHAN
Philadelphia

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

A road map for improving quality of scientific output:
1. Introduce crony capitalism by supporting a few business houses.
2. The business houses if they have a vision will acquire & improve technology with local & imported talent.
3. Once the technological capacity reaches a critical point, need for basic R&D will become apparent. Ergo, this will force the quality of scientific research to improve.

Omer,

A timely article ! We need to get our priorities right. Education is the pill for subcontinental issues and we have to choose between a civilized, educated society and an unstable one reeling with anger, and frustration. Though I wouldn`t say Indian education is well-rounded, atleast in technology, it manages to produce a large pool of well-aware, competitive professionals. Of course, this can be attributed to the law of large numbers, to some extent.

There are some issues though, one of which is trivialization of pursuits towards excellence. Just like our attitude towards anything in the subcontinent is, we are laid back in our attempts at improving the quality of teaching and that of information dissemination (the fact that supposedly `big` universities cannot maintain decent websites attests to this fact). The only prerequisites for some good research in any area is a lot of patience, objectivity, uncompromising attitude, and some information management skills. Unfortunately, the above qualities are not nurtured as much as they should be. Given the national, international politics (God knows how large the influence of Bollywood is...) that loom so large in the subcontinent, the mind does not get as much space as it needs. Its high time both the government and the people in the region decide whether to focus on investment in education (of quality), or lose out on the global radar screen. India had this always in mind, and it did some wise investment, though it can and has to do a lot, to earn its rightful place.