Muhammad Qasim Pasta
Education
- Ph.D. in Computer Science (Social Network Analysis), PAF – Karachi Institute of Economics and Technology (2018) — Thesis: Models for Generating Complex Networks and Benchmark Graphs; Supervisor: Dr. Faraz Zaidi
- M.S. in Software Engineering, PAF – Karachi Institute of Economics and Technology (2010) — Thesis: Dynamic Behavior of Smartphones on the Basis of User’s Location
- B.S. in Computer Science (with distinction), UIT (Hamdard University), Pakistan (2006)
- Summer Institute in Computational Social Science (SICSS), University of Bamberg, Germany (2019, partially funded)
Research Interests
- Computational Social Science
- Social Network Analysis
- Information Retrieval
- Network Science
- Science of Science
- Data Science
Biography
Dr. Muhammad Qasim Pasta has served as Faculty Director of Academic Planning and Governance at Habib University since January 2026, alongside his role as Associate Professor of Computer Science since September 2025. He was Assistant Professor from January 2022 to August 2025, having first joined Habib as a Research Assistant (2015–2017) while co-teaching the interdisciplinary course “Understanding Social Networks.” Concurrently, he has held a long-running Assistant Professor appointment at Usman Institute of Technology since 2017 (including a term as Head of the MIS Department, 2014–2015), and was earlier Assistant Professor and Program Manager at the Karachi Institute of Economics and Technology (2009–2014).
Before entering academia full-time, Dr. Pasta founded and ran Naveeta Enterprise, a software startup (2010–2014), and worked as Technical Lead at Ovrlod and Software Engineer at ITIM Systems and Knowledge Management, developing enterprise retail and travel-agency software.
Dr. Pasta’s research applies network science to real-world social systems: he is part of the international Forum for Research on Phenomenon-Oriented Science (FORPHOS) collaboration with the Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt and the University of Amsterdam (2020–present), measuring and visualizing cross-disciplinary research impact, and leads a multidisciplinary Habib project quantifying Pakistan’s judicial data (2023–present). He received Habib University’s Teaching Excellence Award in 2024 and is a Senior Member of IEEE.
Selected Publications
- Shariff, S., Adnan, A., and Pasta, M. Q. “Bridging Language and Culture: Applying NLP Methods for Topic Classification of Couplets Using BERT.” ICMLC, 2024.
- Rothenberger, L., Pasta, M. Q., and Mayerhoffer, D. “Mapping and Impact Assessment of Phenomenon-Oriented Research Fields: The Example of Migration Research.” Quantitative Science Studies, 2(4), 2022.
- Pasta, Q., and Zaidi, F. “Model to Generate Benchmark Graphs Based on Evolution Dynamics.” IEEE/ACM ASONAM, 2018.
- Pasta, M. Q., and Zaidi, F. “Topology of Complex Networks and Performance Limitations of Community Detection Algorithms.” IEEE Access, 2017.
- Zaidi, F., Pasta, M. Q., Sallaberry, A., and Melançon, G. “Social Ties, Homophily, and Extraversion–Introversion to Generate Complex Networks.” Social Network Analysis and Mining, 5, 2015.
Book Chapter: Baig, M. Z., Khatoon, H., Raza, S. S., and Pasta, M. Q. “Theoretical Foundations for Recommender Systems.” In Big Data Recommender Systems: Recent Trends and Advances, IET, 2019.
Honors & Awards
- Teaching Excellence Award, Habib University, 2024
- Research Grant, Bavarian Research Alliance (International Project Initiation), 2023
- ETH Zurich Travel Grant, 2020
Professional Affiliations
- Senior Member, IEEE
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