News
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We built an early warning system for epidemics using Internet
surveillance data, called FluBreaks . It
uses the Google Flu Trends data to detect epidemics early using a
bunch of statistical processing techniques. Very useful for countries
like Pakistan that do not have a real-time disease surveillance
system. Read our paper in the Journal of Medical Internet Research
(JMIR), the top journal in Medical
Informatics: FluBreaks:
Early Epidemic Detection from Google Flu Trends
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My article in Express Tribune on how we revamped the Intermediate and Matric exam system in Punjab: Results that matter!
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My article in the Washington Post on startups and innovation in the developing
world:
A tale of two tech startup cities
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I am currently on sabbatical, working as Chairman of the Punjab Information Technology Board
(PITB) in the Government of Punjab. In this role, I head all public-sector IT initiatives in the
government of Punjab, Pakistan, with an annual budget of close to $20 Million.
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Our joint work with UC Berkeley on rural telephony systems has received a Google
Faculty
Research Award , in collaboration with
Tapan Parikh and Eric Brewer. This is the first time someone in Pakistan has received a
Faculty Research Award from Google.
- Two papers from our research group accepted:
BitMate paper (BitTorrent for the developing world) accepted at ACM HotNets'11
and Polly
paper (Speech-based viral services in the developing-world) accepted at
IEEE/ACM ICTD'12.
- All the work by teams at Dritte and SCI is paying off: I
was named one of the top 35 young innovators in the world
by MIT
Technology Review (TR35). This is the first time a Pakistani has
received the TR35 award! Lots of
international and
local press, and TV interviews: Geo TV -- Kamran Khan
Show,
Express TV
- Some good press for two startups at SCI.
PBS ran a story on See`n`report's impact on enabling
citizen journalism in Pakistan and its use during the recent floods in
Pakistan. The
article on SMSall (formerly ChOpaal) tells the story of how
it grew
from a small university project to the largest SMS Social Network in
Pakistan. SMSall has sent over 3 Billion SMS for
hundreds of
thousands of people in Pakistan (and recently in other countries).
- After two years of hard work, we've released our
BitTorrent client for the developing-world, called
BitMate, with great reviews by CNN,
New York Times, GigaOm
and many
others. Within three days of releasing the BitMate client, we already
have thousands of downloads. BitMate improves the performance of
low-bandwidth BitTorrent clients by
more than 70%, without cheating or adversely effecting the performance
of higher bandwidth peers. Read the story on
New York Times
. Update: BitMate has
close to 30,000 users from 173 countries.
- Along with a group of other World Economic Forum's Global Leaders (YGL),
we have launched a new YGL Task Force on using ICT for Development
(ICTD). We ran a small pilot project on using SMS for Education. Planning to
start a larger project on building a disease outbreak detection system.
- All the good work by teams at SCI and Dritte is paying off.
I was named a Young
Global Leader (YGL) by the World
Economic Forum in 2010.
- Video of my two-part interview for CIO on entrepreneurship
in Pakistan: Part
I
Part
II
- Pakistan's largest English newspaper Dawn has published an article
on
our incubator -- Saif
Center of Innovation (SCI) -- and our citizen
journalism startup See`n`Report
.
- Our work on Grassroots technologies received the
MIT Global Indus Technovator Award!
- Prof. Richard Anderson and his team has made a video
of the
collaborative course between UW (Seattle), Microsoft Research (Redmond)
and LUMS, Pakistan.
- Two of my startups -- ChOpaal.pk
and SeeNreport.com
-- won the Annual
ICT PASHA (Pakistan Software Houses Association)
Awards, 2008 and were shortlisted to represent Pakistan in
the
Asia Pacific ICT Awards
(APICTA'08) in Jakarta.
- I was awarded the CIO IDG
Technology Pioneer Award . The
inaugural CIO awards were given to those who helped shape the Pakistan
software industry in the last 10 years. Given that I was still an
undergrad 10 years ago, I am humbled by the recognition of our recent
entrepreneurial activities (BumpIn.com,
ChOpaal.pk
and SeeNreport.com
)
- My
dream startup incubator is finally online in Lahore! My three
startups -- BumpIn.com,
ChOpaal.pk
and SeeNreport.com
-- become the first citizens of
S.C.I.
- Our
research on
Goal-oriented
adaptive systems received the Mark Weiser Award at
IEEE
Percom'08. Watch videos of our two goal-oriented systems: Goal-oriented
Sockets [Follow-Me-Video]
and Goal-oriented Programming System
[Adaptive
Teleconference].
- Our
Poor Man's broadband
system
for the developing-world was featured in the New
Scientist and the MIT
Technology Review. Our paper
was
selected to appear in a compendium of
best papers from ICTD'07 in a special issue of the ITID
Journal.
- Our
collaboration with UC
Berkeley's TIER group received funding from NAS/US State Department
and
HEC. We will be working on Rural WiFi and inverse-multiplexed GPRS
Networks, Developing-world "Teleputer" and Poor Man's Akamai with Eric
Brewer's group. Check out
the Dritte
pages for updates.
- Our
three-way course on "Computing
for the Developing-world" with
University of
Washington and Microsoft Research was broadcast live
between three sites. 20 odd
students attend the course from LUMS (at 6AM Pakistan time). We learned
many interesting lessons in using technology for International
Distance Education (published in 13th CSCWD conference).
- Our
collaborative project with MIT
on Disease Epidemiology
in Pakistan
received funding from PITB. We will be focusing on TB and Malaria in
Punjab.
- Poor Man's Broadband received funding from the Microsoft Research (MSR) Digital Inclusion Program. This is the first time MSR has funded a research project in Pakistan.
