A message from me on 5th Birthday of NAYS Pakistan Dear Fellows and Colleagues It is great blessing of God that we are an independent country and celebrating our independence day on 14th of August which is also 5th Birthday of National Academy of Young Scientists (NAYS) Pakistan. Developing countries have different problems then developed countries and mostly they need tailored made solutions which are country specific as each country has its own customs and traditions but sometime these traditions and customs overlap. As major population (~65%) of Pakistan is comprise of youth so youth is a hope for progressive and prosperous Pakistan but how to utilize this youth for nations development? The first and foremost thing is to unite the youth and then give them an ideology so they could contribute as one unit for the progress of country. They need couching, skill and guidance on regular basis. As there was not a single platform for young scientists in Pakistan which belong to different science discipline so this lead to foundation of National Academy of Young Scientists Pakistan on 14th Aug, 2009, 5 years ago. To have a National Young Academy (NYA) was not a new idea as first NYA was established in Germany back in 2000 and then NYAs in Netherlands, Sudan, Morocco and it continued and Pakistan became the 5th country with NYA but first in Asia (presently there are more than 25 NYAs and many countries are in process to establish NYA). This is indeed an honor for us. The basic objectives were to provide a platform to young scientists and to give them a voice, to develop scientific culture and also to develop linkage between academia and industry for strengthening the economy. To achieve these objectives different projects were started back in 2009 and it continued till today and presently we are running more than 15 programs of national and international interest. Some projects are model projects including community education and awareness program (CEAP), Science for Youth (S4Y), Mobility and Migration; action against brain drain and Public Health Services (PHS) which can be easily followed by other countries. It does not mean that other projects are less important; I only highlighted these due to their impact. NAYS Pakistan gradually gained popularity and young scientists started joining it with deep interest to do something for our nation. Presently we have more than 4,500 registered members and a team of over 200 NAYS officials which indicate the great success and popularity of NAYS Pakistan. One significant milestone was registration of NAYS Pakistan under society registration act which was done back in 2011. NAYS team is really dynamic which is working day and night to promote science and technology in Pakistan and I would like to mention few name here. Aneela Yasmeen is serving as events coordinator and ex-editor in chief NAYS e.newsletter and e.bulletin, she worked very hard and organized so many events all over Pakistan. I am sure all the Members of NAYS are very much familiar with Tabinda Salman being the project coordinator of CEAP as she worked very hard and has given a good recognition to NAYS Pakistan. Dr. Attia Kamran is serving as editor in chief NAYS magazine and publishing and managing magazine on regular basis. Asma Tariq is editor in chief of NAYS e.bulletin and making her best efforts to publish it on regular basis and currently Irum Fatima is working at her position as acting Editor in Chief. In addition, Sana Jabeen arranged many competitions successfully and she is also now serving as NAYS awards coordinator, Ammarah Khalid is Project coordinator for mobility and migration and arranged several program all over Pakistan successfully. Sheharbano is leading survey and publications team and working hard to conduct several surveys and get opinion of young scientists. Dr. Alvina Zaineb is head of Public Health Services (PHS) and she is doing wonderful job by awareness through SMS service which is very regular and popular, she also arranged medical camps and producing health related literature. Sayed Raheel Hassan arranged EIC successfully for the last years and planning for this year. Ambreen Gul is managing all the administrative work including registration and also NAYS Global and Dr. Huma Akram is head of NAYS Lecture Series. Zaryab Khalid Sial is working as project coordinator in science for youth project and for the first time we celebrated Science for Youth Week all over the country in very successful way, despite her bad health she put her best effort and Science for Youth week was such a success. Ubaid Umar is currently serving as Editor in Chief for NAYS e.newsletter and also helping us in other IT related projects. Aliya Farooq is serving as Project Coordinator for Naeay Chirgh project and she is producing Naeay Chirgah reports on regular basis. I have mentioned only the team head as it is hard to give details of whole team but these team heads are having wonderful team members who are the real backbone of each project. Presently we have an executive committee (EC) of NAYS comprised of 20 members for all the decision making process of NAYS. The EC is comprised of mainly project heads. We are very hopeful to start other subject specialties including agriculture, veterinary, environmental and social sciences and it will surely broaden the scope and we will have more diverse NAYS Team. Rahib Hussain being the IT coordinator is working hard with us along with his IT team since he has joined NAYS Pakistan. Dr. Zaighum Abbas being chief coordinator, Dr. S.M. Shahid as Vice President and Dr. Jawad Hassan as General Secretary are playing their vital role for the success of this organization. Sajjad Ahmad and Intsar Ahmad are helping us in our financial issues. M. Shahbaz Aslam and Mudassar Iqbal being part of NAYS Ideas Lab and media team also worked well in their capacity and our website Manager Mr. Daniyal Shahid has worked really hard to update NAYS website all the time. Asif Raheem Qaisrani worked very hard as NASY linkage coordinator to develop linkages with many national and international organizations. In addition there is also a long list of people who are working silently with NAYS team and contributing significantly. The great thing is that all the people I have mentioned and all team members are working on volunteer basis for a greater cause. In the last years success stories were two grants from International bodies including The Emerging Nations Science Foundation (ENSF), Italy for our CEAP project and from IASP (Canada) to arrange series of pain management workshops for General Practitioners (GPs) in different cities of Punjab as part of PHS project. I am really pleased to share that we conducted 6 knowledge transfer workshops on Chronic Pain Management successfully in Lahore, Gujranwala, Sheikhupora, Sialkot, Faisalabad and Rawalpindi with the help of resource person including Prof. Saeeda Haider, Prof. Safia Zafar, Dr. Kashif and Dr. Farjad from Karachi. Our recent collaboration with American Society for Microbiology (ASM) was very successful and we could arrange 5 training workshops on Biosafety/Biosecurity in Islamabad, Lahore, Peshawar, Layyah and Bahawalpur. This was for the first time we could arrange events in South Punjab. A national level competition on Science Communication is also in progress in collaboration with ASM and the winner team will visit USA and will present their project there. This clearly indicates the trust of international organizations on work and management of NAYS Pakistan. We are very hopeful to get few more grants this year to continue our efforts on Biosafety and Young Researchers Skill Development. It is also great pleasure to share that NAYS was able to publish 10,000 booklets on Hepatitis B and C awareness in Urdu language and we are distributing them for free all over the country. Presently we also completed another booklet on Diabetes and we are very hopeful that it will be published this month. 10,000 copies of diabetes booklet (in Urdu language) will also be distributed for free, beside this now we are also working on an awareness booklet on Cancer. Since the establishment of NAYS Pakistan our main target was to provide platform to young scientists of Pakistan and we mainly emphasized to achieve this objective and we could not work that significantly on other two main objectives including science penetration in society and bridging the gap between academia and industry. We have achieved our first objective to greater extent and we will keep working for it but in future our main emphasis will be science and society and academia-industry linkage. To achieve our objectives we have started two projects, NAYS Science and Society and Asma Saleem is project coordinator and other project is NAYS Science and Technology Park and Sana Rajpoot is the new project coordinator and we are very hopeful that these programs will also work successfully. We are thankful to God that we have very good team in all the provinces of Pakistan and there are NAYS members and officials in almost all the universities and research institutes of Pakistan. We have started our NAYS Experts Team (NET) to utilize the expertise of our different experts in multiple subjects across the country and also a Research and Development Team to better analyze our problems and go for its solutions. Presently we have more than 20 members in our Expert team with great motivation to play their role for the betterment of science in Pakistan. We are also pleased to share that we have developed very good links and coordination with Government institutes especially Pakistan Science Foundation (PSF) and Pakistan Council for Science and Technology (PCST), universities and media in the form of Technology Times, Tech TV and APP, we are now collaborator and partner of so many national organizations (NSS, BAQI, TAS, MMAP, SS of UoP etc.) and also have good linkages with international organizations including The Emerging Nations Science Foundation (ENSF), Global Young Academy (GYA), IASP, UN, AAAS, ASM and few others. We always look forward to have collaboration with all the bodies who are working to promote education, science and technology in Pakistan. The advisory board including Prof. M. Akhtar, Prof. N.M. Butt, Prof. Kausar Abdullah Malik, Prof. Zabta Khan Shinwari, Prof. M. Aslam Baig, Prof. Pervaiz Iqbal, Prof. Shahid Mansoor, Prof. Shahid Qamar, Prof. M. Subhan Qureshi and Prof. Azra Khanum are always there to help and guide us. Prof. Dr. Manzoor H. Soomro has really played a vital role for the progress of NAYS by his help and guidance at each stage. Prof. Anwar Nasim being the patron of NAYS was always available with his full support and always encouraged and guided us. He is also serving as General Secretary of Pakistan Academy of Sciences (PAS) so hopefully NAYS will also have good linkage with PAS. There are many other senior and eminent scientists who are helping and guiding us time to time and whenever we asked for help and guidance, they always supported us and I would like to mention the name of Prof. Tayyab Husnain (Director CEMB), Prof. Qazi (VC University of Lahore) and Prof. Mujahid Kamran (VC, University of the Punjab) in particular. There is long list of other supporters and due to length of this writing it is hard to mention name of all. We are also deeply thankful to administration of University of the Punjab for giving us office place in the University and financial support for NAYS website. We truly believe that Pakistan is blessed with lot of natural resource and human intellectual resources as well, there is only need to properly utilize our intellectual resources and manage our natural resources and that day is not far when Pakistan will be among developed nations. Presently we are facing enormous challenges in the form of poverty, corruption, illiteracy, health issues, urban issues, political instability, foreign interference, environmental issues and a long list of other issues but we are hopeful that with the blessings of God and work of people of Pakistan we will face these challenges boldly and Pakistan will be a role model for other countries in future. What we have done so far is very little and we have to do is lot more but I am sure with the dynamic people that we have in NAYS team and with the help and support from young and senior scientists of Pakistan, we will have a significant positive effect and impact in our country, in shaa Allah. (My apology if I forgot the name of any officials or important person who haS contributed for NAYS) Long Live NAYS Long Live Pakistan!!! Aftab Ahmad Chattha President NAYS Pakistan.
Posted on: Wed, 13 Aug 2014 19:29:24 +0000
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