Education:
- Summer Institute in Computational Social Science, University of Bamberg, Germany
- Ph.D. in Computer Science, Karachi Institute of Economics and Technology, Pakistan
- M.S. in Software Engineering, Karachi Institute of Economics and Technology, Pakistan
- B.S. in Computer Science, Hamdard University (Usman Institute of Technology), Pakistan
Teaching Experience:
- Assistant Professor, Computer Science Department, Usman Institute of Technology, Pakistan
- Assistant Professor, College of Computing and Information Science, Karachi Institute of Economics and Technology, Pakistan
Industry Experience:
- Technical Lead, Ovrlod (Pvt.) Ltd.
- Software Engineer, ITIM Systems
Courses Taught:
- Social and Information Network Analysis
- Design and Analysis of Algorithms
- Data Structures and Algorithms
- Software Design Patterns
- Software Engineering
- Social Media Analysis
- Database Systems
- Graph Databases
Research Interests:
- Computational Social Science
- Social Network Analysis
- Information Retrieval
- Science of Science
- Network Science
- Data Science
Biography:
Dr. Pasta is passionate about teaching computer science at the undergrad level and has more than 12 years of teaching experience. He has completed his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Karachi Institute of Economics and Technology in 2018. His research interest lies in the field of Network Science and Data Science, particularly in the areas of extraction, analysis, and visualization of complex networks. He is working on models for the generation of synthetic networks based on dynamics observed in real-world networks, while also enabling the embedding of ground-truth structures, such as community structures.
Dr. Pasta is also working in the area of computational social science and studying the usage of technology to understand the underlying problems of society. He received funding to attend the Summer Institute of Computational Social Science (SICSS) at the University of Bamberg, Germany in 2019, and the Winter Workshop on Complex Systems organized by the European Society of Complex Systems in 2020. His recent work collaborated with two other German professors, is recently published in one of MIT journals.
Prior to joining academia, he has been part of the software development industry of Pakistan in different roles. He is passionate about software development and is part of different open-source project teams. In addition, Dr. Pasta is an active social worker and works with different Memon community organizations to promote education; especially for underprivileged students.
Selected Awards and Accomplishments
- IEEE Senior Member, elevated in November, 2019. IEEE Senior membership is an honor bestowed only to those who have made significant contributions to the profession.
- ETH Zurich Travel grant for Winter Workshop in Complex Systems, Switzerland. (2020)
- Awarded Gold Medal for securing first position in B.S. (2007)
- Secured 4th Position from All Over Pakistan in National Software Competition (Under 17) , organized by Computer Society of Pakistan (1999)
Selected Publications
- Liane Rothenberger, Muhammad Qasim Pasta, Daniel Mayerhoffer, “Mapping and Impact Assessment of Phenomenon-Oriented Research Fields—The Example of Migration Research”, Quantitative Science Studies, MIT Press (2021)
- Pasta, Muhammad Qasim, and Faraz Zaidi. “Topology of Complex Networks and Performance Limitations of Community Detection Algorithms.” IEEE Access (2017).
- Zaidi, Faraz, Pasta, Muhammad Qasim, Arnaud Sallaberry, and Guy Melançon. “Social ties, homophily, and extraversion–introversion to generate complex networks” Social Network Analysis and Mining (2015)
- Pasta, Muhammad Qasim, Faraz Zaidi, and Céline Rozenblat. “Generating online social networks based on socio-demographic attributes.” Oxford Journal of Complex Networks, (2014)
