New responsibility: Dr Saif now Punjab chief minister’s adviser

LAHORE: Besides the induction of new ministers and advisers, the Punjab government has appointed Information Technology University (ITU) Vice-Chancellor Dr Umar Saif as the chief minister’s adviser.

Dr Saif will attend all provincial cabinet meetings and will also assist the Shahbaz Sharif on issues related to e-governance and use of technology in transformation and automation of civil services, an ITU spokesperson said. Dr Saif is the first Pakistani to have received a PhD in computer science from the Cambridge University of UK. He served as a professor at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) between 2006 and 2013.

In 2009, he became one of the few professors to be awarded permanent Tenure by LUMS. His work on grassroots technologies received the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Tech Innovator Award in 2008 and he was named as Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2010.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 30^th, 2016.