Introduction
Co-run by the Office of Research and the Graduate School Curation Program at Habib University, the Summer Tehqiq Research Program (STRP) is the flagship program to promote undergraduate research culture at Habib University. STRP aims to provide a modest research fund to faculty members to implement a small-scale research idea. At the same time, STRP is an intensive curated research experience for students. The STRP is designed to help students develop their own research projects over the course of four semesters, attain an in-depth understanding of academic research methods, work with individually selected faculty mentors and gain experience of scholarly achievement beyond an undergraduate degree. Students receive a stipend to participate in the STRP and faculty members receive an honorarium to supervise these students and train them in essential research skills.
The Summer Tehqiq Research Program is divided into two segments: STRP 1, which consists of faculty-led, guided research and STRP 2, which supports students as they pursue their own independent research.
To support timely progress of faculty projects and to enhance learning experiences of STRP student researchers, GSCP and Office of Research has carried out following interventions:
1. Meetings with faculty supervisor
STRP students are required to meet their faculty supervisor at least once a week during the 10-week period to receive necessary guidance for improving their research work and updating faculty on the progress of the research activities assigned to them.
2. STRP weekly session
The STRP 2022 student researchers meet once every week to discuss their research progress and share feedback about the program. Each student research team presents their project updates in a group presentation, and responds to questions by their fellow cohort mates. The sessions bring together the interdisciplinary group of student researchers (hailing from all six disciplines at Habib University) and provide them the opportunity to learn about the topics, ethics and methods of research across different disciplines.3
3. Guest lectures
To develop student researchers’ knowledge about conducting research and managing challenges pertaining to it, GSCP and Office of Research organized multiple guest lectures. Renowned researchers and academicians shared their research experience with student researchers and encouraged them to pursue the journey of inquiry in a methodological way.
4. Feedback on Report Writing and Research Poster Design
Students receive one on one feedback for research report writing and research poster design from their faculty mentors so they are able to present and disseminate their scholarly work to wider community in an effective manner.
Faculty Research Proposals – Application Link:
Click the link to submit research proposals for Summer Tehqiq Research Program 2023: https://habibuniversity.sharepoint.com/sites/Faculty/Pages/Summer-Tehqiq-Research-Program.aspx
STRP 2022 – Research Projects
STRP 2022 was a 10 weeks program scheduled from 6th June – 12th August, 2022. During STRP 2022, 31 students are working on 12 faculty-led research projects. Details of projects selected for STRP 2022 are as under:
Topics in Computer Graphics
Muhaqqiqeen: Muhammad Meesum Ali Qazalbash and Muneeb Shafique
Faculty Supervisor: Dr. Waqar Saleem
Description: This project was a combination of two sub-projects: physically based rendering and implementing the graphics pipeline. Physically Based Rendering is a class of techniques that aim for photorealistic rendering. The aim was to achieve a competent level of familiarity with Physically Based Rendering to implement some of the learned methods and gain proficiency in related tools. The Muhaqqiq could generate his image by writing a part description file that gave a realistic image when rendered.
Graphical Pipeline is often implemented as hardware on GPUs. The students explored creating the pipeline in software to understand it better. The research successfully emulated the graphical pipeline in software before it only existed in the hardware on GPUs. The study would later expand on teaching students to construct their pipeline, stage by stage.
Deep learning-based activity recognition for tracking and monitoring elderly people
Muhaqqiqeen: Areeb Adnan Khan, Syed Muhammad Mustafa, Haania Siddiqui
Faculty Supervisor: Dr. Muhammad Farhan
Description: The existing sensors-based tracking and monitoring devices for elderly people are neither intelligent nor viable due to memory and cognition-related issues of the elderly people. The students produced an intelligent solution based on computer vision that utilized deep neural networks for recognizing elderly people’s activities from videos captured by an RGB-depth camera. The model performed well in three activities: walking, sitting, and lying, helping elderly people significantly.
Development of a dc-dc converter-based DC-nano grid platform
Muhaqqiq: Muhammad Suleiman Qureshi
Faculty Supervisor: Dr. Ahmad Usman
Description: Student explored shifting from the traditional AC power grids to DC-nano grids that allow independent electricity operation of small population clusters, removing the extra burden on the centralized grid and allowing electricity penetration into remote areas. The research aimed to explore the applications of dc-dc converters in realizing dc nano-grids from Pakistan’s perspective and develop a scaled-down prototype of ~500Watts using the dc-dc converter technology.
Design and analysis of low-power sensor nodes for KWP
Muhaqqiqeen: Nimra Sohail and Maham Tabassum
Faculty Supervisor: Mr. Junaid Memon
Faculty Supervisor: This project shed light on the significant water challenge in Karachi: the elevated level of non-revenue water (NRW) in the system due to the lack of domestic water metering, which prevents Karachi’s water utility (KWSB) from being financially viable. The research seeks to explore the cost and energy-efficient water-metering infrastructure. Students worked towards developing a power-efficient innovative flow meter that can accurately measure and remotely transmit flow information to a cloud-based central server. Students aim to improve current demand estimates and projections, ensuring improved water resource planning.
Investigating transformers for the Urdu language
Muhaqqiqeen: Shafaq Fatima Mughal, Anosha Fatima Fazli, and Asad Tariq
Faculty Supervisor: Dr. Abdul Samad and Dr. Mobeen Movania
Description: Students investigated the performance and efficiency of transformers in Urdu and Roman Urdu languages for the task of sentiment analysis. After researching different datasets, the conclusion was made that the XLM Roberta Transformer is efficient in multi-class sentiment analysis tasks.
Medicinal effects of almonds – perception vs. science
Muhaqqiqeen: Syed Shujauddin, Rimmal Hussain Jaffery, and Hamza Abdullah
Faculty Supervisor: Dr. Humaira Jamshed
Description: This research explored natural alternatives like almonds, widely recognized as a nutritionally rich food with a wide array of health benefits to treat dyslipidemia and hypertension in place of chemically produced medicines. Recently, the focus of medical care has shifted towards taking preventive measures; nonetheless, global nut consumption is not up to the recommended levels. This research tried to uncover the perceptions and misconceptions of Pakistani people regarding nut consumption. This research also conducted a thorough article review from 1944 to 2022 to analyze the cost-benefit of almonds compared to prescribed drugs in treating chronic cardiometabolic disorders.
Teaching Introductory Economics: The A-level challenge
Muhaqqiqeen: Sabrina Haider and Zoha binte Asif
Faculty Supervisor: Dr. Mohammad Moeini-Feizabadi
Description: This research explored the impact of K-12 education background on university-level education in terms of economics grades to see if achieving good grades in college-level economics translates to receiving equally good grades in university-level economics courses. The project focused on all major academic backgrounds in Karachi, Pakistan, like A-level, AKUEB, BIEK, FBISE, and IB.
Gender sensitive messaging – creating a space for gender empowerment
Muhaqqiqeen: Saniyah Salman and Rahim
Faculty Supervisor: Mr. Farhan Anwar
Description: This project focused on creating a discourse centered around ‘Gender Sensitive Messaging’ targeted at school children using ‘pilot’ communication tools and models. This would aid in their secondary socialization about gender in a positive manner that will have a lifelong effect. Moreover, the pilot storybook is one of the long-term interventions that can impact how women and their roles are viewed in society.
Khanqahi madrassahs: Sufi reformation in the 19-20th century
Muhaqqiqeen: Bisma Barkat Ali and Samana Butul
Faculty Supervisor: Mr. Muzammil Patel
Description: This research investigated the context and milieu of the 19th-century Sufi reformation within the context of the larger South Asian Islamic reformation. In particular, the Qadiri Order focuses on Khuwaja Abdur Rehman Chohrvi and his teachings as a Sufi teacher, combined with the establishment of his Madrassah to examine the reformation that resulted in the formation of a network of Khanqahi Madrassahs and then recognize the degree to which the reformation was internally driven or influenced externally.
Women’s inclusion in the financial sector
Muhaqqiqeen: Hafsa Amir and Syeda Dua Zehra Zaidi
Faculty Supervisor: Dr. Mohammad Moeini-Feizabadi
Description: This research aimed to investigate the cultural, institutional, and economic reasons for the under-representation of women in the financial sector. By employing primary and secondary research methods, students intended to understand the root causes of women’s exclusion from the banking sector.
Quantifying determinants of ability and willingness to pay for water services in Karachi
Muhaqqiqeen: Aimen Imtiaz, Rida Rehan Chughtai, and Ajab Shabbir Hussain
Faculty Supervisor: Dr. Hassaan Khan and Dr. Sahaab Bader
Description: Karachi suffers indescribable water poverty, and there appears to be no distinction between the upper- and lower-income neighborhoods regarding a declining water landscape. The response of the Karachi Water & Sewerage Board towards this paucity of water is simple; a lack of recovery from the population. The study focused on gauging the population’s willingness to pay for water resources by considering various socio-economic factors, including locality, household expenditure, income, the number of household members, education, etc.
Youth health – Research, Education and Public Outreach
Muhaqqiqeen: Rida Khan, Insha Mushtaq Hashmani, Bushraa Yousuf, and Laiba Zehra
Faculty Supervisor: Dr. Humaira Jamshed
Description: This study is designed to inspect students’ general health, physical activity, sleep quality, anxiety, loneliness, and self-esteem. It explored youth’s eating behaviors, food, and nutrition literacy. Online surveys were administered across students of different universities in Karachi. Data on health indicators such as BMI, blood pressure, heart rate, blood sugar, and cholesterol levels were also measured. It concluded that early recognition of problems, identifying poor life choices, and asking for professional help could significantly prevent illnesses faced by the youth.