Habib University takes runner up prize for most innovative university at Pakistan Innovation Foundation
KARACHI: Habib University (HU) was nominated among five other institutes by the Pakistan Innovation Foundation for Most Innovative University, including Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), and acquired the runners up position for its Sciences and Engineering program.
In only its second year since inception, the university’s School of Sciences and Engineering (SSE) programs have managed to place HU on the map in terms of innovation and its approach to an engineering education.
Initiatives encouraging innovation in Pakistan are gathering momentum, with more and more universities aiming to tackle real life problems of their societies. Keeping this in mind, the Pakistan Innovation Foundation held its first National Innovation Challenge wherein they studied and inspected various institutions and agencies looking to cause change.
The PIF National Innovation Awards put out a list of 12 categories, including education, health, government and social development, and called in industry experts to offer a fair assessment to innovators in each industry.
In the category for education, the PIF looked for the most innovative, forward-thinking institutions that were prepared and actively tackling the societal and energy problems faced by Pakistan with an innovative, hands-on approach. It chose Habib University as runners up purely due to its contribution in introducing innovation in the education industry.
Dr. Shoaib Zaidi, Dean of HU’s SSE, commended the Physics lab of LUMS especially, remarking on how deserving it is of the National Innovation Award. “We initially started out with help from LUMS itself, collaborating with them in building our science program, and have worked hard on it since.”
Habib University’s science program has been designed with the help of four faculty members, namely Dr. Shoaib Zaidi, Dr. Anzar Khaliq, Dr. Samina Yasmin and Dr. Shah Jamal Alam. It was through the untiring efforts of these individuals, and an endless research and scrutiny of the global scenario as well as the domestic, that such innovation was introduced into the program, allowing it to be placed on the educational innovation map.
“Our science program is deeply inspired by Dr. Bruce Alberts, who recently commended Habib University’s innovative efforts for its science and engineering program in an article featured on nature.com”.
HU considers it an honor to be awarded “runner’s up” by the PIF, and as per Dr. Shoaib, the faculty members mentioned above have revolutionized SSE, giving it such momentum in such a short period of time that HU is capable of competing with institutes that have been around for several decades.
“The science and engineering program is built in a way that it doesn’t take a traditional approach towards learning, there are no books involved, each course is project based and students are encouraged to create solutions for real life problems by evaluating them through a transdisciplinary education model”, said Dr. Anzar Khaliq.
Global issues such as climate change and sustainable energy are at the core of the HU liberal arts program, ensuring that students are deeply aware and capable of discourse and developing solutions for real life scenarios, regardless of their concentration.
