Dr Rehman,second from left, as federal minister for science and technology, receiving a foreign delegation. Right: SHAPING A GENERATION: Dr Atta ur Rehman speaking in Doha on Education, Innovation & Entrepreneurship Imperatives for Progress.
Photo by Ghaiyas


By  Umer Nangiana


From merely 600 research papers in 2003, Pakistan started producing 4,300 research publications per year in 2008; university enrolment almost tripled from 135,000 to 400,000 in the same five-year span.  
Not a single Pakistani university, between 1947 and 2003, could be ranked among world’s top 600 universities. Today, at least two Pakistani universities rank among top 200 world’s technology universities besides seven universities ranking among the top 250 universities of Asia, according to QS World University Rankings 2013.
Pakistan’s research output shot up 50% within two years, the second highest increase worldwide. Scimago world scientific database says if Pakistan continues at the same pace, its ranking will increase from 43 to 27 globally by 2017.
All of this was achieved through one man’s vision, culminating in an institution called Higher Education Commission (HEC) that replaced the old Universities Grant Commission (UGC) in Pakistan back in 2002.
The man is Dr Atta ur Rehman, renowned scientist, educationist and the first chairman of HEC. To his name, he has 974 publications in several fields of organic chemistry, including 718 research publications, 37 international patents, 151 books and 68 chapters in books, largely by major US and European scientific publications.
He is the editor-in-chief of 12 European chemistry journals and the editor of Studies in Natural Product Chemistry, 43 volumes of which have been published by Elsevier Science Publishers (Netherlands). Dr Rehman is the first scientist from the Muslim world to have won the prestigious Unesco Science Prize (1999) in the 35-year-old history of the prize. He was elected as Fellow of Royal Society (London) in July 2006. And this list of awards and honours go on.
Dr Rehman was in Doha for a lecture on Education, Innovation & Entrepreneurship Imperatives for Progress organised by the Pakistan Engineers Forum (PEF) recently. On the sidelines of the PEF seminar, this reporter spoke to the scientist about the current state of education and research in the Muslim world, especially Pakistan, besides his study on ‘chemical basis of thought.’
“When I say mother, a certain image is made in your brain, what is the molecular basis of that. All thoughts are made of atoms and molecules. Thoughts are not abstract, they are concrete. So I am studying which molecules are involved. How are thoughts stored ...,” Dr Rehman explains as we strike a conversation over the dinner table.
He had proposed a theory of hydrogen bonding, the hydrogen bonds in glyco-proteins, 10 years ago and a review came out in United States just three months ago that was written by Dr Rehman and one of his former students in the Neuroscientist that explains this theory in greater detail.
“We have been involved in neuroscience in a way that has led to the discovery of some very exciting anti-epileptic compounds; the compounds which can be used in epilepsy. These are being patented in the United States and now undergoing physical trials in Canada,” says Dr Rehman.
From his personal donation, he has established Jamil ur Rehman Centre for Genome Research under the International Centre for Chemical and Biological Sciences (ICCBS), University of Kararchi, an institution to which he has devoted his life, developing it.
After completing his PhD from Cambridge University in 1968, Dr Rehman taught there till 1973. Since then, he has been engaged full time to develop ICCBS. “My dream was to set up an institution which is so good that students from the West would come to study there. That was a test for me, can we set up a centre like this? Alhamdulillah (by the grace of God), we have had 130 German students in the last 5 years who have come to study chemistry at my centre. We have people from all over the world coming to ICCBS,” says Dr Rehman.
Jamil ur Rehman Centre for Genome Research, named after his father, was established with the money he had saved put together with the 5mn rupees that he had won in Engro Excellence Award a few years back. “I wanted to contribute something which will be useful for the future generations. We have state-of-the-art gene sequencing facilities and there is a lot of interesting work going on about salt tolerant plants and on looking at the genetic diseases that we find in our part of the world besides the genetic diseases found in different population groups between Sindhis, Balochis and others,” he adds.
Dr Rehman is a reservoir of knowledge. Talk to him about anything from history to the most latest scientific innovations from around the world, you would find the answers backed by solid facts. A man of principle, Dr Rehman resigned as chairman of HEC in protest when the then government withheld scholarships of university students over the issue of devolution of HEC in 2008. However, till then, he had completely changed the landscape of higher education in Pakistan for good.
“The development budget, for instance, for higher education at that time was only about 300mn rupees. Now it is 20bn even after the budgetary cuts, which is a complete change,” says Dr Rehman.
He fought for the institution on several issues it has faced over the years. “There was an attempt by the previous government to break down the HEC but I went to the Supreme Court and won and prevented the fragmentation of HEC,” he adds.
As a result, Dr Rehman says, the quality of research being done in Pakistan has improved manifold. He dismisses the occasional reports of plagiarism as “a drop in the ocean.”
“Nothing is published in an international journal unless it has been peer-reviewed by at least two or three neutral international experts. So what you hear about some paper having being copied may be odd incidents but these are just drops in the ocean. As much as 99.9% of the work is top-quality, it is reviewed by eminent experts and is published in the world’s leading science journals,” says the veteran scientist.
Occasional plagiarism incidents happen everywhere whether it’s Europe or the US. However, through a software ‘ithenticate’, plagiarism in Pakistan was completely controlled.
Emphasising on agriculture, Dr Rehman says, he has already created a knowledge roadmap for Pakistan for research investment that was approved by the then government in August 2007. This 300-page document highlights specific fields that Pakistan must focus on. It contains complete projects which if implemented will lead to huge job creation and poverty alleviation, he says. Excerpts from a rapid fire Q & A …

All said and done, why is Pakistan not getting more Dr Atta ur Rehmans?
We have thousands of Dr Atta ur Rehmans (chuckles). They are young. You have to wait for them to grow up and you have to nurture them and you have to support them. You have thousands of young people who are far better than I am.
Within 15 years you will see a lot of young bright people. These are people that we have invested in. We sent 11,000 students abroad after intensive competitive selection process. They are brilliant young people. We need to support and nurture them now.
What is the current state of investment in research and innovation in the world and where does the Islamic world stand?
We are living in a knowledge-driven world and countries which are investing in science and innovation are the ones which are moving ahead. More papers come out from a small country like Switzerland than from the entire Islamic world put together.  
We (Muslim world) are absolutely nowhere. The world is divided into those who have knowledge and lead the world and those who don’t. Science is unfortunately now playing the role of the master and the slave. Those who have science are the masters of the world and those who don’t have are slaves.
As a result of this in the last 30 years, the poor countries are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer.

What has caused this decline in the Muslim world?
A combination of factors. When Mongols destroyed our libraries, we lost valuable treasures as printing had not been invented as yet. The West at the time of industrial revolution made huge investments in science. See centuries-old universities like Cambridge and Oxford, for instance.
We were building Taj Mahals instead of building universities. We lost track. The investments that we should have been making in education and research were not made.

Talking of Pakistan, what do you think is the country’s biggest problem, terrorism or illiteracy?
Pakistan’s biggest problem is governance, neither terrorism nor illiteracy. If you have good governance then everything falls into place. You need visionary, honest and technology friendly leadership that realises that the real wealth of Pakistan lies in our children. If we are going to progress it has to be at the strength of creative manpower, the 100mn young people below the age of 20 that we possess.




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