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"Can a Modern Science & Engineering Institution in Pakistan Be Sustained?"

Asad Abidi, Chancellor's Professor, UCLA Department of Electrical Engineering

Monday, January 28, 2013
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
10383 Bunche Hall

After serving on the UCLA faculty for 22 years, I took a two year-long leave in 2007 to serve as Founding Dean of the newly formed School of Science & Engineering at the Lahore University of Management (&) Sciences (LUMS) in Pakistan. I will recount the exuberance with which the project launched, with the objective to find the best available faculty, identify the most promising students from the far reaches of Pakistan, and deliver a state-of-the-art integrated science, math, and engineering curriculum in facilities that would be the envy of an undergraduate institution anywhere. But even well-cushioned private institutions in Pakistan are pressed by global economic declines, rapidly changing regional politics, and the many insecurities that permeate society, including from within the institution; these pressures become particularly evident in high-stakes projects. I will trace the first four years of LUMS SSE, and speculate on how it might evolve in the next ten to twenty years.

Bio: Asad Abidi received the BSc (Hons) from Imperial College, London and the PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, both in Electrical Engineering. Following three years at Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ, he joined the UCLA Electrical Engineering faculty in 1985, where his research and teaching is on microelectronics circuit design. He was elected Fellow of the IEEE, Member of the US National Academy of Engineering, and Associate Fellow of TWAS, the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World.