LUMS SSE - Newsletter January to June 2007

PROLOGUE

Restarting suspended conversations in a natural manner is an art form. We will attempt it in this newsletter, given that the previous newsletter from the SSE was more than a year ago (the Jan-Mar 2006 issue). If you have followed the SSE since its beginnings in 2004, you might have wondered at the gap. The main reason is simple: things have been extremely busy for the small group of SSE staff and volunteers. This newsletter will show what has claimed their energies.

If you are new to the SSE, it might be useful to read our vision, conception and evolution from previous newsletters (link above) or from http://sse.lums.edu.pk/documents.htm. But to allow you to read on, here is a two-line description. SSE aims to be the first private research school in Pakistan consciously modeled on the US Research University (a model crystallized in its current form only in the last 50 years, and which is unlike any other institutional form previously developed for higher education). SSE aims to establish a new model for science and engineering education/research in Pakistan, and is targeting globally competitive standards in all it pursues: education, research, entrepreneurship and institutional impact. That is a very high bar; it is a very substantial challenge, but optimism is also very high. You will see in this newsletter why.

SSE has progressed considerably over the last year. In our previous newsletter, we had announced a Dean Search; now our first Dean has been appointed. Then the LUMS Management Committee had just approved tenure-track appointments for faculty; now we have operationalized the mechanisms, set up committees of well-respected, international academics and hired a number of initial faculty. Then we had approximately $13.2m; now we have approximately $30m in pledges. Then the groundbreaking of the SSE building had just taken place; now we have completed a third of the building and are on target for completion in summer 2008. Further, several other things have happened or are happening: two named Chairs have been established at the SSE; an exciting workshop took place at the SSE this January; a few research collaborations are being actively pursued; and the student admission policies are progressing well. What is more important is that momentum continues to grow, i.e. the future trajectory of faculty hiring, funding, etc. looks increasingly promising.

faculty, staff and the sse community

DEAN

Professor Asad Abidi has been appointed as the first Dean of the SSE. Asad brings to the job the weight of his substantial existing achievements and his conviction in the potential of the SSE. He received the B.Sc. (Hon.) degree in Electrical Engineering from Imperial College, London in 1976. He also received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1978 and 1981. Since 1985, he has been at the Electrical Engineering Department of the University of California, Los Angeles where he is a full Professor. You can find his detailed bio at http://sse.lums.edu.pk/faculty/asadabidi.htm.

In February 2007 Asad was elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), which marks the highest professional lifetime distinction accorded to an engineer in the US. Asad was recognized for his contributions to the development of CMOS radio-on-a-chip technology (technology for the next generation of cell phone chips and wireless networking in computers). Election to the NAE is an honor for Asad. It is also an honor for the SSE to have him at the helm.

FACULTY

Faculty are the most intractable problem, the true Gordian Knot of any research school in Pakistan. Simply put, there is no way to get to SSE’s vision without absolutely the best people we can find, specially when starting off. On that, there is good news to report. This section lists the faculty who have joined the SSE team already. There are also tenure-track faculty not listed here (2 to be precise) who have accepted offers but want their appointments announced at a later date; and the number of faculty applications in the appointments pipeline is healthy.

Visiting Faculty

n Fridoon Jawad Ahmed, Biology

n Salman Ahsan, Electrical Engineering

n Faheem Hussain, Physics

n Khalid Rasheed, Chemistry

Tenured Joint Faculty

n Asad Abidi, joint appointment with the Electrical Engineering Department, University of California, Los Angeles

n Khalid Aziz, joint appointment with the Department of Earth Sciences and Energy Resources Engineering, Stanford
University

You can view a listing of faculty members with links to more detailed information and their bios at http://sse.lums.edu.pk/faculty.htm.

STAFF

SSE also needs exceptional staff. Too often in building SSE-like institutions in developing countries, staff hiring and development is an after-thought. SSE hopes to be different. There is no way to erect an edifice of excellence without first-rate staff, and a true, conscious partnership between the faculty and staff in institution building. The calculus for this is straightforward – in addition to the compelling argument about the intrinsic value of human beings. Every unit of time an exceptional staff member can save faculty is time they can devote to contact teaching and research. Every unit of time faculty spend on education and research is ten times more valuable than the time they spend on other tasks.

With a small group of faculty, and an overwhelming to-do list, exceptional staff are every bit as important as faculty to the SSE. On that, there is good news to report as well. New staff have joined the SSE and are managing crucial aspects, e.g. faculty recruitment, fundraising, marketing etc. But it is also time to recognize the dedication of the existing staff (Zakeesh Iqbal, Sarah Mahmood, Saima Haroon etc.), without whom we would not be at the stage we are at. Their bios can be seen at http://sse.lums.edu.pk/project_team.htm. Members who have joined over the last year are (their bios are also at the same link):

n Salman Ahsan, Associate Project Director

n Kiran Anwar, HR Administrator

n Mariam Qureshi, Communications Executive

SSE COMMUNITY

Advisory Board
SSE’s Advisory Board has continued to deepen its imprint on the SSE’s character. Members of the Advisory Board regularly and frequently advise the SSE team and LUMS Management Committee; they guide the development of SSE’s policies; they answer operational questions on faculty appointment processes, curriculum design, and much else; several are currently on SSE’s appointment committees, acting as gatekeepers of faculty quality; they have opened doors for us to corporations like Schlumberger, British Petroleum etc.; and in general are one of the most important assets the SSE has. The time they have volunteered and continue to dedicate to the SSE is amazing. Their efforts cannot be measured in words.

The Advisory Board has also grown in size; from 8 (in February 2006) to 13 with the following new members coming on board (bios are available at http://sse.lums.edu.pk/advisory_board.htm):

n Dr. Hubertus Dewitz (Siemens, Germany)

n Professor Ashok Mittal (IIT Kanpur, India)

n Professor Amos Nur (Stanford, USA)

n Professor Obaid Siddiqui (National Center for Biology, India)

n Professor Xiang-Sun Zhang (Chinese Academy of Sciences, China)

Virtual Program Development Team
Another group which has been a crucial pillar for the SSE is the Virtual Program Development Team (VPDT). In its earliest days (2004-05) SSE depended heavily on the volunteered time and energies of this loose group of academics/professionals, which was instrumental in crystallizing SSE into its current form. It played a part in debates over the nature of a research school, the viability of such a school in Pakistan, in the debates over tenure, in rough curriculum design and in rough infrastructure estimates, e.g. lab equipment etc. VPDT continues to play the role of SSE’s peer and support group and has expanded to about 39 members now. The full list is available at http://sse.lums.edu.pk/vpdt.htm.

Tenure-Track Faculty