Eight scholars to visit Germany

Lindau hosts scholarly meeting on medicine/physiology.

ISLAMABAD: Eight young Pakistani scholars have been selected to attend the prestigious Nobel Laureates meeting in Germany. To be held from June 26 to July 1, 2011, the subject of the meeting will be based on Medicine/Physiology.

Out of the 168 applicants from the fields of Medicine/Physiology/BDS, 24 graduates having excellent academic record were short-listed.

A selection board then met at the Higher Education Commission (HEC) Secretariat to choose eight of the graduates for Germany.

The selection board comprised five eminent scientists and two professors each of medicine and dentistry.

The successful graduates include Ehsan Ullah, University of Health Sciences, Lahore; Farzeen Tanveer, Ziauddin Medical University, Karachi; Fahmeeda Jan, Bolan Medical College, Quetta; Kanwal Zulfiqar, Ayub Medical College, Abbottabad; Maryam Alam Khan, Khyber Medical University, Peshawar; Shahbaz Ali Khan, Ayub Medical College and Teaching Hospital, Abbottabad; Syed Imran Ali Shah, King Edward Medical University, Lahore; and Wafa Omer, Army Medical College, NUST, Rawalpindi.

Since 1951, the week-long meetings of Nobel Laureates by annual rotation in Physics, Chemistry and medicine/Physiology are held in Lindau, Germany.

Every year, 500-600 young scholars from over 60 countries attend the meeting where 15-20 Nobel Laureates inspire these young scholars through informal interactions, lectures on contemporary science topics, panel discussions and face-to-face discussions.

The purpose of these meetings is to create knowledge through interaction with Nobel Laureates and bringing inter-cultural harmony among graduates from different nations.

After the first-time initiative of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission in 2003, HEC has been actively supporting this unique activity of great scientific inspiration. The graduates of the first-class academic career are selected through a very transparent mechanism. The quality of Pakistani students has been described by the organisers of the meeting as “graduates of high quality from Pakistan” and their performance has been termed as “excellent”.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 17^th, 2010.