Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Adnan Haider talks about Entrepreneurship and Engineering Schools in Pakistan

Adnan Haider is the Co-Founder of Lootmaar, an online marketplace for Pakistan. In the 19th episode of ITLoW, he talks with Madam Jehan Ara about entrepreneurship, where Lootmaar is today, what their plans are, and some of the challenges that he and his partner Noman Turab have faced along the way.

Adnan Haider is a graduate of Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology (SZABIST), worked in Pakistan as a technical specialist for IBM - focusing on computer storage solutions, before proceeding for his Masters in Engineering Management (MEM) from the Duke University Pratt School of Engineering under a Fulbright Scholarship. While at Duke, Adnan was part of the ImaGyn team that won a US$100,000 prize to develop a device to facilitate cervical cancer prevention in the developing world.

At the end of the interview, he also discussed the Engineering Schools in Pakistan and only his one gesture “And then we have FAST” says everything about the current state of affairs at NUCES Campuses. I already raised the same concerns like Lack of Incubation Centers and Experienced Faculty as well as recommendation of inter-disciplinary work in one of my previous blog posts “FAST-NU Engineering Fiasco.” Good to find somebody who thinks the same way :)

Click on the following widget to see the interview.

2 comments:

ABDU said... @ April 22, 2009 at 6:51 PM

I truly appreciate your concern about the FAST engineering "fiasco"; but criticism and only criticism won't get you anywhere, let alone doing FAST any favours. Yes, i myself am not a big fan of the administration and the level we're studying at FAST; but the positive side is that its better than many! All we can do, if anything but continuous criticism is, in Theodore Roosevelt's words:

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

Yes, you have a FAST degree, you have been part of this institute for four years(hopefully), and you need to live with it!

Rafaeel Akbar Chaudhry said... @ April 22, 2009 at 7:24 PM

@ ABDU: True. You cannot take some entities off your profile. Two of them are your country and educational institute. If you read that post completely, i proposed a solution too. Moreover, that post was written on the request of OSAF Executive Committee Members to highlight what are the problems of Engineering Students and how the overall environment at the campus can be improved.

Post a Comment