Forgotten patron: Rector recalls Dr Abdus Salam achievements

Informs senate body of CIIT’s plans to open country’s first liver transplant centre.

Although a newly-proposed liver transplant centre was the main point of discussion between members of the Senate Standing Committee on Science and Technology and the rector of  Comsats Institute of Information Technology (CIIT) on Wednesday, heads turned when a senator questioned the lack of a single building named after Dr Abdus Salam.

Junaid Zaidi was briefing the senate body on the varsities’ achievements, including the establishment of a liver transplant centre in Karachi with assistance from Turkey and DOW University of Health Sciences Karachi, along with several memorandums of understanding (MoU) signed between local and foreign universities during the Islamic Universities’ Vice Chancellors conference arranged by CIIT.



“Comsats has signed several MOUs which are being acting upon in practice,” he informed the chairperson of the senate body, Sajid Mir.

When asked about the absence of any university building or facility honouring Pakistan’s only Nobel laureate, despite the fact that CIIT and its parent body, Comsats, was the brainchild of the late theoretical physicist, the rector told Senator Karim Khwaja, albeit with a little hesitation, that there were multiple reasons, but only one tangible one. “Speaking frankly, we were met with a storm of threats from many groups when we tried to do so,” he informed.

Later, the senator offered Zaidi assistance in setting up a campus in Sindh in the name of Dr Salam, while Senator Naseema Ehsan suggested that the university’s academic network be expanded to Baluchistan. Science and Technology Minister Zahid Hamid then noted that a proposal to establish a CIIT campus in Quetta was already on the cards.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 9^th, 2014.