MIT World Top Young Innovator – Dr. Umar Saif – Pride of Pakistan
Dr. Umar Saif Named one of the World’s Top Young Innovators by MIT. Link :- http://www.lums.edu.pk/news_detail.php?id=TlRBeg
Dr. Umar Saif, Associate Professor at the School of Science of Engineering, has been recognized by MIT Technology Review as one of the top 35 innovators (TR35) in the world. In the last decade, this is the first time a Pakistani has been selected for the prestigious TR35 award.
“The TR35 recognizes the world’s top 35 young innovators that are radically transforming technology as we know it. Their work – spanning medicine, computing, communications, energy, electronics and nanotechnology — is changing our world”, according to MIT Technology Review.
Dr. Umar Saif has been honoured for his work on technologies for the developing-world. Technologies developed by Dr. Saif’s research group and startups are used by millions of people in the developing-world. Notable among the many of these are: BitMate – that enhances the speed of Internet in the developing-world using peer-to-peer technology, and SMSall.pk – Pakistan’s largest SMS Social Network which has sent close to 4 billion SMS for users in Pakistan.
Dr. Umar Saif joins an elite group of researchers and entrepreneurs selected over the last decade. Previous winners include Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the co-founders of Google; Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook; Jonathan Ive, the chief designer at Apple; David Karp, founder of Tumbler; Harvard Professor Alán Aspuru-Guzik for his work on Quantum computers; and MIT Neuroscientist Ed Boyden, one of the inventors of the emerging field of optogenetics, which makes it possible to control neurons with light.
MIT Technology Review selects the top innovators after a rigorous evaluation process. Judges, who are leading experts in their fields from universities such as MIT, Stanford and Harvard, consider hundreds of high-impact researchers and entrepreneurs from all over the world, out of which top 35 are chosen for the award.
“This year’s group of TR35 recipients is driving the next wave of transformative technology and making an impact on the way we live, work and interact”, said Jason Pontin, editor-in-chief and publisher of the MIT Technology Review.
Dr. Saif has won numerous awards for his innovative technology solutions for the developing-world. He was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2010. He is a recipient of the MIT Technovator Award (Grassroot Technologies); Mark Weiser Award for best paper award at PERCOM, the top rated conference in the field of pervasive computing; Digital Inclusion Award from Microsoft Research and the IDG CIO Technology Pioneer Award. Before moving to Pakistan, Saif worked at MIT and received a PhD from the University of Cambridge. He is a Fellow of the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust.
“We are immensely proud of this recognition for Dr. Saif and of how it reflects on the cutting edge work being done at our young School of Science and Engineering”, said Adil Najam, Vice Chancellor of LUMS. “Dr. Saif’s work demonstrates not only the potential for innovation in technology for development but also the level of enterprise and expertise that already exists within Pakistan and the larger developing world.”
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