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Karachi: The last few months have brought several pieces of good news from the technology sector. The latest in this burst of successes to celebrate has been provided by Dr. Umar Saif. MIT has named Umar Saif as one of the world’s top young innovators for 2011. P@SHA joins the rest of the country in showing how proud we are of Umar who has brought glory to Pakistan several times in the past few years.
By appearing on the TR35 list, Umar joins an elite group of researchers and technologists. MIT has in previous years recognized the likes of Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google and Jonathan Ive, Chief Designer of Apple. Umar is the first Pakistanis to have received this recognition. Check out this link:
http://www.technologyreview.com/tr35/
LUMS released the following announcement making the news public.
Lahore, Pakistan – August 23, 2011 – Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) today announced that Dr. Umar Saif, Associate Professor at the School of Science of Engineering, has been recognized by MIT Technology Review as one of the top 35 innovators (TR35) in the world. In the last decade, this is the first time a Pakistani has been selected for the prestigious TR35 award.
“The TR35 recognizes the world’s top 35 young innovators that are radically transforming technology as we know it. Their work – spanning medicine, computing, communications, energy, electronics and nanotechnology — is changing our world”, according to MIT Technology Review.
Dr. Umar Saif has been honoured for his work on technologies for the developing-world. Technologies developed by Dr. Saif’s research group and start-ups are used by Millions of people in the developing-world, especially Bit Mate, that enhances the speed of Internet in the developing-world using peer-to-peer technology, and SMSall.pk, Pakistan’s largest SMS Social Network which has sent close to 4 Billion SMS for users in Pakistan.
Dr. Umar Saif joins an elite group of researchers and entrepreneurs selected over the last decade. Previous winners include Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the co-founders of Google; Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook; Jonathan Ive, the chief designer at Apple; David Karp, founder of Tumbler; Harvard Professor Alan Aspuru-Guzik for his work on Quantum computers; and MIT Neuroscientist Ed Boyden, one of the inventors of the emerging field of optogenetics, which makes it possible to control neurons with light.
MIT Technology Review selects the top innovators after a rigorous evaluation process. The judges, who are leading experts in their fields from universities such as MIT, Stanford and Harvard, consider hundreds of high-impact researchers and entrepreneurs from all over the world, out of which top 35 are chosen for the award.
“This year’s group of TR35 recipients is driving the next wave of transformative technology and making an impact on the way we live, work and interact”, said Jason Pontin, editor-in-chief and publisher of the MIT Technology Review.
Dr. Saif has won numerous awards for his innovative technology solutions for the developing-world. He was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2009. He is a recipient of the MIT Technovator Award, Mark Weiser Award, Digital Inclusion Award from Microsoft Research and the IDG Technology Pioneer Award. Before moving to Pakistan, Saif worked at MIT and received a PhD from the University of Cambridge. He is a Fellow of the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust.
“We are immensely proud of this recognition for Dr. Saif and of how it reflects on the cutting edge work being done at our young School of Science and Engineering,” said Adil Najam, Vice Chancellor of LUMS. ”Dr. Saif’s work demonstrates not only the potential for innovation in technology for development but also the level of enterprise and expertise that already exists within Pakistan and the larger developing world.
For more information, contact:
Secretariat
Pakistan Software Houses Association (P@SHA)
Room 310, 3rd Floor, Business Centre
Block 2, PECHS, Main Shahrah-e-Faisal
Karachi, Pakistan
Tel: +92-21-35418121
Email: secretariat@pasha.org.pk