September 6, 2003

ASSOCIATION of Pakistani Scientists and Engineers of North America (Apsena) held its 20th Annual Conference in Albany, New York, on Aug 23.

In a departure from the other “official” accounts of the conference that focus on the politically correct and fashionable, this one is a personal account that looks at the day’s events and its context without that baggage of having to cherry pick quotations from the speeches of the dignitories of the day. It focusses on the action in the trenches and sometimes behind the trenches.

The article encompasses two broad themes. First, it discusses and summarizes what was learnt, in a technical sense, from gathering of Pakistani Scientists and Engineers in North America, the view of the action-in-the-trenches.

Second, it delves into the larger picture of the role of Pakistani Americans in general and Apsena in particular in the development of Pakistan as gleaned by this author and an assessment of where we are heading — a behind-the-trenches perspective.

Carrying forward its tradition of holding an annual conference of good academic value every year, Apsena once again deserves credit for bringing together a fairly august list of speakers to Albany this year. And this despite the organization’s current difficulties and challenges that I would discuss in the second section of this article. The conference was chaired by Dr Sajjad Alam and co-chaired by Mofeez Murtaza and Drs Qazi Salahuddin and Sabiha Khatoon.

Several notable Pakistani scientists and engineers also served on the programme committee. The conference was broadly divided into five themes with over 30 speakers and spanned over the entire day in five consecutive-sessions format.

The first session on physical sciences featured a mix of talks by individuals on relatively technical issues topics, such as an introduction to particle physics and a non-destructive testing technique to more amenable issues having to deal with nurturing of scientific research in Pakistan and the findings of an empirical research project on Pakistan’s environment. It was indeed the latter two that were the most useful from the perspective of the conference’s main topic — seeking to define the role of Pakistani Americans in the development of Pakistan.

Dr Liaquat Hussain of Wadsworth Lab talked about his experience — as a veteran researcher of three decades — of trying to jumpstart collaborative research projects with Pakistani agencies, such as PAEC and Suparco.

His talk was a mix of useful insights for those trying to walk this road and some welcome developments in the recent past or just around the corner. Notwithstanding the difficulties of the process, including lack of resources and equipment and an instance in which he was expected to conduct a full-fledged research programme with the help of masters students of a local university “only” — a level that someone at the conference remarked was equivalent to American high-school science students.

Dr Hussain’s efforts seems to have resulted in slow but sure progress on the research collaboration goals. He also talked about the plans to set up a National Environmental Sciences Research Centre in Karachi that directly came out of the efforts of his group at Suparco.

Dr Haider A Khawaja talked about an internationally funded study of Pakistan’s environment and his experiences of doing empirical research in a tough Pakistani environment. Some interesting takeaways from his research include the fact that the fog over the northern Pakistan (also read as Lahore) is a result of sulphuric acid emissions coming from India’s exessive burning of sulphur fuels and the fact that the quality of Naithigali’s environmental content was found to be similar to New York’s!

The session on biological sciences again dealt with fairly technical and esoteric topics, such as drug development and commercialization, neuronal networks, Alzheimer’s disease, and pharamcuetical drug development. While the talks were in and of themselves very informative, barring the final one I found it a little hard to make the connection with Pakistan’s development.

The third session, one on business development, provided a welcome focus back to Pakistan’s development and how expatriates can and have played a part in that area. Several talks looked at this issue from various angles.

Faraz Hoodbhoy, in an interesting and informative talk, shared the experience of setting up a development office of Silicon Valley-based Clickmarks Inc in Karachi, Pakistan. His talk, really a “Setting Up a Business in Pakistan 101”, was full of insights and useful tips and data (for instance, costs and time estimates) to inform the interested audience.

In stating the value proposition in the end, he stressed on the unbeatable cost advantage that comes from setting up a development office in Pakistan, namely, that a 23-person operation in Pakistan costs as much as one person in Silicon Valley.

In another presentation, Ahmed Safi and Mofeez Murtaza talked about the experiences of bringing high value-added engineering services to Pakistan through the example of Simcon International, a contract Engineering Design firm in Karachi with clients both in US and Europe.

Sohaib Umar talked about Venture Capital in Pakistan and TMT Ventures’ efforts to jumpstart technology entrepreneurship. Several other talks focused on variety of business development and startup issues, such as US-Pakistan trade, services of World Trade Centre organization and the impact of US Immigration law on the ability of expatriates and Pakistanis to work with the US.

The fourth session, on education and S&T, featured several interesting presentations on issues, such as status of engineering and computer sciences. Education in Pakistan, promoting a culture of research in Pakistan, a summer visiting faculty’s impressions, concepts of video based science and math coaching centres, and a public-private partnership in the area of science and technology. Most of the speakers focussing on engineering education system in Pakistan talked about the lack of resources and a research culture in Pakistan.

Dr Junaid Zubairi, who spent a summer as a visiting faculty at an IT institute in Islamabad, remarked how he was captive to the “key problem” whereby he couldn’t work in the institute’s lab after hours because the peon had to go home with the key and also how he learned not to trust when he was told “it would be done. . . because it never gets done (in Pakistan)” and hence preferred to do everything himself, even to the extent of installing software for his students.

Dr Murtaza Haider’s talk on developing a research culture identified several useful mechanisms through which expatriates could help develop a research culture in Pakistan. My own talk focussed on the blue-print of an expatriate-led, private-sector-driven, public-sector-supported, participative, transparent, and performance-based public-private partnership in the area of science and technology that has the potential of developing the trust, right environment and mechanisms to jumpstart technology development in Pakistan. The idea draws its strength from the examples of several nations—India, China, Armenia, Israel, etc. — where expatriate confidence and investment in the home country has subsequently led to the same by major corporations from US and EU. It, however, called for a flexible model that could best suit the Pakistani environment and the resources and capabilities of its expatriate population.

The final session, on information technology provided several more interesting presentations.

Dr Sajjad Alam talked about Beowulf Cluster — a clustered arrangement of Pentium III microprocessors that results in computing power approaching today’s low end supercomputer at an order of magnitude lesser cost.

He termed these the “poor man’s supercomputer.” He talked about his recent visit to Pakistan where he offered to train Pakistani researchers in building these machines, “several educational/research institutes initially agreed to participate,” he said, “but only one of them ended up sending an individual to actually get trained. . . the rest later wrote back expressing their doubts if this could ever actually be achieved,” he added.

Ahmar Abbas talked about grid computing and stressed the need for Pakistan to get into value-added knowledge services by becoming a part of the international research/engineering grid.

Syed A Maroof talked about the opportunities in telecommunication sector resulting from the recent deregulation of PTCL and stressed the need for proactive not reactive approaches and policies to capitalize on this multi-million dollar opportunity.

Dr Sarfraz Mian discussed the idea of entrepreneurial universities in the context of Pakistan. He drew upon his conversations with several higher education leaders in Pakistan and their eagerness to proactively move towards a roadmap of an increased role of universities in entrepreneurship and economic development that included entrepreneurship courses and hands-on incubator programmes.

Several keynote speakers talked about the need for greater involvement of Pakistani Americans — specially technically trained expatriates — in the development of Pakistan.

Mr Pervaiz Lodhi — a successful veteran Pakistani entrepreneur and the CEO of Ledtronics Inc — underscored the value proposition of investing in Pakistan in the following words: “Thanks to Pakistan, my company can compete against any low-cost producer of quality products in the world . . . the quality of product coming out of my Karachi office is even greater than one in Los Angeles.”

His advice, you won’t find it easy to work in Pakistan but If you’re committed to contributing to Pakistan, and are willing to take on the challenge despite all obstacles, you’ll be richly rewarded in the end.

Mr Mohammad Sadiq, the deputy chief of mission at the Embassy of Pakistan and the acting-ambassador for the day highlighted current government’s achievements in the economic realm and stressed upon the need for greater involvement of Pakistan Americans not only in the American political life but also in the economic development of Pakistan.

As the conference concluded, I was swept with the dual and conflicting feelings of appreciation and scepticism. On the one hand, I was all admiration for the Albany Conference Team that had really done well to collect an eclectic group of speakers from all across the US, which in turn was pointing towards the vitality of the Pakistani American scientists and engineers and their willingness to contribute to Pakistan, and on the hand, the conference left much to be desired. The attendence was certainly less than the 700 or so attendees two years ago. From the audience attendence standpoint (~100 or so people) the conference looked like a small regional affair rather than a national gathering of Pakistani scientists and engineers in the world’s most technologically advanced country. To be fair to the Albany Team, much of this has to do with the gradual erosion of Apsena as an organization over the years — amply highlighted and acknowledged in the Apsena President’s message in the conference book.

Affected by a lack of organization, lack of volunteerism in the Pakistani community, and financial mismanagement on the part of past managers, Apsena stands today as a dwarf of what it was in its early years. If it ever has to be resurrected, not only does it need youthful energy and zeal but perhaps a renewed vision and a mission to support the former. It would also need to learn to balance the different interest groups among its membership (namely, the young and the old, the scientist and the engineer) and establish a parallel technical and managerial structure to safeguard against future organizational disruptions.

Over the years, several Pakistani organizations have eaten up on Apsena’s membership base. The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) and Organization of Pakistani Entrepreneurs in North American (OPEN) are certainly two of them. Each has its own advantages and problems. TiE, of course, has been hijacked by the Indian technology community in US and OPEN is far more US-focussed (shall I say to the exclusion of a Pakistan-focus) than it needs to be. This makes Apsena, or something like it, both unique and much needed.

There is no refuting the reality that comprehensive science and technology-based economic development, if it ever comes to Pakistan, would require the participation of expatriate Pakistanis — specially US-based expatriates — in a big way. This has been borne out in the experience of every national success story of recent years, India, China, Israel, you name it. What would then be the vehicle for such an undertaking? How can we develop a flexible yet strong and sustainable organizational arrangement to institutionalize these interactions and undertakings?

These questions, and several more, are at the very heart of Pakistan’s development dilemma. Since independence, we have failed to build credible institutions in adequate numbers at home and floundered the trust of our expatriate population abroad. It is an undertaking that would take a true partnership between the government, the private sector and the expatriate community in every aspect of society from health to education to science and technology. Apsena must rise to the occasion or someone else will. In the words of Mr Tariq M Khan, Apsena’s President, Apsena has done well but “its contributions could have been more significant and more consistent”.

Let’s hope that his prognosis that this is a turning point where Apsena starts are steady climb towards the next level and greater contributions is indeed true. Pakistan needs the proactive involvement of its expatriate talent as much as or perhaps more than the expatriates need their motherland.

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