Future scientists: Nine students to represent Pakistan in global science competition

Names of winners announced at a ceremony.

ISLAMABAD:

Nine students are all set to represent Pakistan at an annual global science competition, after they emerged as winners at a national science fair.

Intel Pakistan announced the names of the winners at a ceremony at the Sir Syed Memorial Complex on Wednesday. The winners will participate in the Intel International Science & Engineering Fair (ISEF)-2o14 in Los Angeles in May.

Syeda Minahil from the Forward Girls College Peshawar, Sidra Riaz from the Katchi Memon Academy Karachi and Jalal Waseem from the Aga Khan Higher Secondary School Karachi won for individual projects related to medical sciences, environment sciences and electronics respectively.



They were joined by a group of three students each from the Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed College Karachi and the Punjab Danish School (Girls) Hasilpur, who won for projects on environment sciences and energy respectively.

Harris bin Ashraf, Babar Shah and Muhammad Tahir, all pre-engineering students from Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed College Karachi, formed the other group that won the science fair.

The national science fair was adjudicated by a panel of four judges comprising Dr Azhar Hassan, Chaudhry Jameel Ahmed, Eng. Ghaffar and Dr Ghazala Ashfaq.

The judges reviewed over 75 projects that had won in provincial and district science fairs to reach the national competition in Islamabad.

Minahil who worked on a cure for piles said the science underlying the cure is a mixture of two herbs that is high in fibre content and prevents constipation to reduce the risk of haemorrhoids. “Arriving at the final solution took over eight months of laboratory work, testing and chemical analyses.”

Minahil’s mother, Mohsina Asmat, who is a teacher, said she was extremely proud of her daughter’s achievement.

Asmat said the chemistry departments of research institutes in Peshawar were extremely cooperative in letting her daughter test her hypothesis and ultimately win a ticket to represent Pakistan at the ISEF 2014.

Sana Batool, one of the three girls from Danish School, which won the fair in the group category, said that they had worked on producing electricity from a windmill by refining theoretical power efficiency equations.

“We used destructive distillation to convert plastic garbage into slightly combustible oil that resembles crude oil and can be further refined,” said Harris of Bin Zayed College, who had also won the science fair in 2013 for his individual project on plastic bag decomposition and represented Pakistan at the ISEF 2013 in Phoenix, Arizona.

“My previous participation helped give me confidence and I’ll be able to guide his group to do better at ISEF 2014.”

Science and Technology Secretary Kamran Ali Qureshi said he had a renewed sense of hope that Pakistan’s future was in the hands of dedicated young people and it was extremely important to build a knowledge economy.

“I request the scientists and academicians gathered here to give me a working plan to popularise the work of Pakistani scientists through broadcast and social media.”

Intel Pakistan Country Manager Naveed Siraj said for the past 13 years, Intel has been trying its best to improve literacy in Pakistan through education initiatives.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 30^th, 2014.