Umar saif does it again !
August 18, 2008
Yay Umar! Today’s edition of the MIT Technology Review (TR), a premier
technology magazine.Its the first time MIT Technology Review published about the reseach in pakistan
Re: MIT picks up Pakistani Scientist Research
Dr. Umar Saif, Professor at LUMS, believes that we need to glamorize Research if we are to achieve excellence in Higher Education.
Well, he has started the ball rolling on the path to making research look pretty sexy. What am I talking about?
A paper that Dr. Umar Saif co-authored with students and colleagues at MIT has been awarded the Mark Weiser best paper award at IEEE Percom’08! The Mark Weiser Award is the highest award of recognition for a researcher in the field of Pervasive Computing.
This is the first time it has been awarded to a paper with a byline of a Pakistani university. Percom is ranked in the A+ category in the CORE list (widely used for ranking conferences in CS); as the premier conference in pervasive computing, percom had an acceptance rate of ~11% this year. An extended version of the paper will appear as an invited paper in the Pervasive and Mobile Computing Journal later this year (PMC).
A copy of the paper is posted at:
http://www.cag.csail.mit.edu/~umar/publications/percom08-goals-web.pdf
Read complete article here
Re: MIT picks up Pakistani Scientist Research
Umar Saif
Associate Professor
Computer Science and Engineering
LUMS School of Science and Engineering,
Opposite Sector U, DHA, Lahore,
Pakistan
Umar Saif received his academic training from LUMS, Cambridge and MIT. He received his B.Sc. (Hons) from LUMS (1998), Ph.D. from University of Cambridge (2001) and Postdoctorate from MIT (2003), all in Computer Science. Dr. Saif worked and taught at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) for four years, where he was part of the core team which developed system technologies for project Oxygen- a US$40 million project sponsored by the US Department of Defense and an industrial Alliance of world-class companies. While at MIT, Dr Saif also managed the multi-million dollar collaboration on future computing technologies between University of Cambridge and MIT sponsored by the Cambridge-MIT Institute (CMI) and a consortium of high-tech companies.
Dr. Saif’s research interests broadly span areas of Ubiquitous Computing, Operating Systems, Distributed Systems, Mobile Systems, Highspeed Routing Architectures and the impact of IT in developing world countries. Dr. Saif has authored several technical publications and is a Fellow of the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust. He was the first Pakistani to receive a PhD in Computer Science from University of Cambridge. During his doctorate studies, he was a Trinity College Overseas Scholar and Commonwealth Scholar at University of Cambridge. Dr. Saif was a recipient of the Microsoft Research Digital Inclusion Award in 2006, IEEE Percom’08 Mark Weiser best Paper Award in 2008 and Department Research Excellence Award in 2007. In the past, Dr. Saif’s research has earned him nominations for tthe MIT Technovator award and the TR100 award. He has served on the technical advisory board of several technology companies and is a regular speaker at technology forums, especially relating to the impact of IT in developing-world countries.
Research
I am broadly interested in Computer Systems, including Networks, Operating Systems, Distributed Systems, Languages and Mobile Computing. It turns out that real systems typically transcend these traditional boundaries – my research is often at the intersection of these areas. Most of my recent research has been in an area called Ubiquitous (or Pervasive) Computing, with the aim to make computing natural and unobtrusive, like Oxygen](http://web.lums.edu.pk/umar/press/3583479.stm.html). I now believe that computing can be pervasive only when the “other four billion” have access to it – leading to my current research focus on using ICT for Development (ICTD) in the Third-World.
I lead the NEWT](http://newt.lums.edu.pk/) lab at LUMS and Dritte.org](http://www.dritte.org/). A few interesting projects are listed below. Corresponding publications are available here](http://web.lums.edu.pk/umar/publications.html).
Homepage of Umar Saif
Re: MIT picks up Pakistani Scientist Research
Other noteworthy work done by Umar and his team in the area of research in the last 6 months include
- A project that got funding from Microsoft Research (Poor Man’s
broadband) was featured in New Scientist (a first for Pakistan).
http://www.cag.csail.mit.edu/~umar/NS-PMB.pdf. This was also the first
time a research project in Pakistan was funded by Microsoft Research
(LUMS press release:
http://web.lums.edu.pk/umar/press/microsoft.asp.html
-
They just got a large collaborative research program funded in
collaboration with UC Berkeley (by USAID/HEC). This research program
is focused on Developing-world technologies and the work will be
jointly carried out with Eric Brewer’s TIER group at Berkeley
(http://tier.cs.berkeley.edu). Our side will be led by my team at
http://www.dritte.org and http://newt.lums.edu.pk — with
participation by PTCL, VU, NADRA, PITB and DSD. -
They will be running a course with Univ. of Washington (Seattle, UW)
on developing-world technologies in a week’s time. The lectures will
broadcast live on LUMS campus and Umar Saif will be guest lecturing in a
couple of sessions via a video link. There will be other guest lecturers
from MIT, CMU, Berkeley and Microsoft. Course website (still
evolving):
http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/courses/csep590b/CurrentQtr/
Other noteworthy work done by Umar and his team in the area of research in the last 6 months include
- A project that got funding from Microsoft Research (Poor Man’s
broadband) was featured in New Scientist (a first for Pakistan).
http://www.cag.csail.mit.edu/~umar/NS-PMB.pdf. This was also the first
time a research project in Pakistan was funded by Microsoft Research
(LUMS press release:
http://web.lums.edu.pk/umar/press/microsoft.asp.html
-
They just got a large collaborative research program funded in
collaboration with UC Berkeley (by USAID/HEC). This research program
is focused on Developing-world technologies and the work will be
jointly carried out with Eric Brewer’s TIER group at Berkeley
(http://tier.cs.berkeley.edu). Our side will be led by my team at
http://www.dritte.org and http://newt.lums.edu.pk — with
participation by PTCL, VU, NADRA, PITB and DSD. -
They will be running a course with Univ. of Washington (Seattle, UW)
on developing-world technologies in a week’s time. The lectures will
broadcast live on LUMS campus and Umar Saif will be guest lecturing in a
couple of sessions via a video link. There will be other guest lecturers
from MIT, CMU, Berkeley and Microsoft. Course website (still
evolving):
http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/courses/csep590b/CurrentQtr/
Re: MIT picks up Pakistani Scientist Research
Excellent! MashaAllah.
Re: MIT picks up Pakistani Scientist Research
LUMS is an excellent University! Hats off to Dr. Umer!
Re: MIT picks up Pakistani Scientist Research
Well done. Keep the flag high!
Re: MIT picks up Pakistani Scientist Research
Neighborhood for Emerging World Technologies (NEWT)
The LUMS Neighborhood for Emerging World Technologies (NEWT) Lab was established in Jan 2006 by Dr. Umar Saif to pursue a cross-disciplinary research thrust in developing-world technologies. Research projects at NEWT are specifically aimed at bridging the “digital divide” between the developed and the developing world. The reason for this “digital divide” is that traditional research in ICT technologies is based on assumptions suited to the affluent world, such as affordability of high-end computing devices, broadband communication infrastructure, uninterrupted power supply, computer savvy users, to enlist a few. Therefore, technologies derived from such assumptions often fail to address key challenges of cost, deployment, power consumption, and support for semi-literate to illiterate users in the developing world. Research at NEWT covers diverse areas such as distributed systems, network protocols and architecture, wireless access, sensor networks, ad-hoc and low-configuration communication infrastructure and alternate user interaction paradigms.
NEWT was established with seed funding from Microsoft Research’s (MSR) Digital Inclusion program in Jan 2006. NEWT’s project was one of the 17 projects funded by MSR from the 162 proposals submitted from 34 countries. This was also the first project funded by Microsoft Research (MSR) in Pakistan. NEWT has also initiated several research proposals with local and international grant programs, including USAID, Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB), Higher Education Commission (HEC) and Cisco URP.
For more information regarding the activities at the Neighborhood for Emerging World Technologies Lab, please contact *Dr. Umar Saif *(umar AT lums DOT edu DOT pk).
Grants
Poor Man's Broadband: Peer to Peer dialup Networking
Investigator: Umar Saif
Project Duration: Jun 01, 2006 – June 30, 2007
Funding by Micrsoft Research (MSR) ( US $42,777 )
Re: MIT picks up Pakistani Scientist Research
Projects Funded by CS,LUMS
http://cs.lums.edu.pk/projects&page=1
Projects Funded by External Bodies
http://cs.lums.edu.pk/grants&page=1