A message from President NAYS on 6th Birthday of NAYS Pakistan

Dear Fellows and Colleagues

It is great blessing of God that we are an independent country
and celebrating our 68th independence day on 14th of August which
is also 6th Anniversary of National Academy of Young Scientists
(NAYS) Pakistan.
Majority of population (~65%) of Pakistan is comprised of
youth, so youth is a hope for progressive and prosperous Pakistan but
how to utilize this youth for nations development? The first and
foremost thing is to unite the youth and then give them an ideology
so they could contribute as one unit for the progress and prosperity of
the country. They need education, training, couching, skill and
guidance on regular basis. As there was not a single platform for
young scientists of Pakistan so we came up with an idea to develop an
academy, which lead to foundation of National Academy of Young
Scientists Pakistan (NAYS), Pakistan on 14th Aug, 2009, 6
years ago. We have the honor that NAYS is first NYA in Asia and so
far there are more than 30 different NYAs. The basic objectives were
to provide a platform to young scientists and to give them a voice, to
develop scientific culture and also to develop linkage between
academia and industry for strengthening the economy. To achieve
these objectives different projects were started back in 2009 and it
continued till today and presently we are running more than 15
programs.
NAYS Pakistan gradually gained popularity and young scientists
started joining it with deep interest to do something for the country.
Presently, more than 5000 young scientists are linked to NAYS
through its website and NAYS has a team of over 200 officials, which
indicate the great success and popularity of NAYS Pakistan. One
significant milestone was registration of NAYS Pakistan under society
registration act, which was done back in 2011. If we also include the
social media network, we are currently connected to more than
50,000 young scientists of Pakistan.
NAYS team is really dynamic which is working day and night to
promote science and technology in Pakistan and it will be worth
mentioning few names here. Aneela Yasmeen is serving as events
coordinator and ex-editor in chief NAYS e.newsletter and e.bulletin.
She worked very hard and organized so many events all over Pakistan
and proved her leadership skills. Tabinda Salman being the project
coordinator of an important program of NAYS entitled Community
Education and Awareness Program, playing an active role for public

awareness and with her team tries her level best to organize all the
science days in Pakistan. Dr. Attia Kamran is serving as editor in
chief NAYS magazine and publishing and managing magazine on
regular basis. Although there is some gap recently but hope she will
again work with the same passion and motivation. Irum Fatima is
leading e. bulletin as Editor in Chief and running her project very
successfully with the help of an active and dynamic team. Sana
Jabeen arranged many competitions successfully and she is also now
serving as NAYS awards coordinator, Ammarah Khalid was Project
coordinator for mobility and migration and arranged several program
all over Pakistan successfully. She is moved to Japan now for her
higher studies, so we are now looking for an active person who could
join as program coordinator. Sheharbano was leading survey and
publications team and working hard to conduct several surveys and
get opinion of young scientists. She resigned from her survey head
position and now we have Jamil iqbal as lead person. Dr. Alvina
Zaineb is head of Public Health Services (PHS) and she is doing
wonderful job by awareness through SMS service which is very regular
and popular, she also arranges medical camps frequently and
producing health related literature. Soon we are going to launch
Screen Pakistan program under PHS and planning to do massive
screening for Hepatitis B and C in different areas of Pakistan. Sayed
Raheel Hassan arranged EIC successfully for the last years and
planning for this year. Ambreen Gul is managing all the
administrative work including registration and also NAYS Global and
Dr. Huma Ikram is head of NAYS Lecture Series. Zaryab Khalid Sial
was working as project coordinator in science for youth program but
Aneela Yasmeen made her best effort to arrange 2 nd science for youth
week this year as Zaryab has to leave the program due to health
issues. Ubaid Umar is currently serving as Editor in Chief for NAYS
e.newsletter and also helping us in other IT related projects. Aliya
Farooq is serving as Project Coordinator for Naeay Chirgh project and
she is producing Naeay Chirgah reports on regular basis. Asma
Saleem is leading Science and Society project nicely and Sana
Shoaib Rajput is leading NAYS Science and Technology Park
program. Both these programs are new and hopefully soon these will
be mainstream program of NAYS. Iqra Yousaf has recently joined
NAYS and has done great job in IT and graphics team of NAYS. I have
mentioned only the team heads as it is hard to give details of whole
team but these team heads are having wonderful team members who
are the real backbone of each project. Presently we have an executive
committee (EC) of NAYS comprised of 25 members for all the decision
making process of NAYS. The EC is comprised of mainly project heads.
Although, there is constantly change in project heads but we are
planning to have an official meeting of NAYS EC to elect the new main
leadership of NAYS Pakistan.

Rahib Hussain being the IT coordinator is working along with

his IT team since he has joined NAYS Pakistan. Dr. Zaighum Abbas
being chief coordinator and Dr. Jawad Hassan as General Secretary
are playing their vital role for the success of this organization. Intsar
Ahmad is helping us in our financial issues. M. Shahbaz Aslam and
Mudassar Iqbal being part of NAYS Ideas Lab and media team also
worked well in their capacity and our website Manager Mr. Daniyal
Shahid has worked really hard to update NAYS website all the time.
Asif Raheem Qaisrani worked very hard as NAYS linkage
coordinator to develop linkages with many national and international
organizations. In addition, there is also a long list of people who are
working silently with NAYS team and contributing significantly. The
great thing is that all the people, I have mentioned and all team
members are working on volunteer basis for a greater cause. After the
5th birthday of NAYS, Nigarish Umer joined as NAYS coordinator and
served at this position for 8 months and she was the first person who
joined NAYS as an employee. In future, we will have few paid positions
in NAYS especially related to administration so we could reduce the
burden on our volunteers.
Last year we had collaboration with American Society for
Microbiology (ASM) and arranged 5 training workshops on
Biosafety/ Biosecurity in Islamabad, Lahore, Peshawar, Layyah and
Bahawalpur. This was for the first time we could arrange events in
South Punjab. A national level competition on Science Communication
was also successfully conducted in collaboration with ASM and the
winner team will visit USA and will present their project there. This
clearly indicates the trust of international organizations on work and
management of NAYS Pakistan. We won another grant from American
Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS) and started another
series of workshop on Biosafety and so far we have conducted four
biosafety workshops in Multan, Lahore, Faisalabad and Kohat and
other workshops of this series are also in the pipeline and hopefully
we will complete this series in September this year. This was the first
event of NAYS Pakistan in MNSUA, Multan and Kohat. It is also great
pleasure to share that NAYS was able to publish 10,000 booklets on
Hepatitis B and C awareness in Urdu language and we are
distributing them for free all over the country. In addition, we also
completed another booklet on Diabetes and published 10,000
copies of diabetes booklet (in Urdu language) and our distribution
is in progress. Now we are working on another booklet related to
cancer and we are hopeful that we will be able to complete and
publish it this year. It is also our great pleasure to share that our
proposal to conduct a workshop series related to Biotechnology is
accepted by International Center for Biotechnology and Genetic
Engineering (ICGEB) and we will start this series next year. NAYS team
have prepared and submitted few other events proposal especially

related to young scientists leadership program and hope we will

conduct a series on this topic.
We are thankful to God that we have very good team in all the
provinces of Pakistan and there are NAYS members and officials in
almost all the universities and research institutes of Pakistan. NAYS
Experts Team (NET) is growing and we are trying to utilize the
expertise of our experts in multiple subjects across the country and
also a Research and Development Team to better analyze NAYS
and national problems and go for its solutions. Presently, we have
more than 30 members in NAYS Expert team which are leading
researchers in their respective field and they are ready to play their
positive role to promote science and technology in Pakistan.
We are also pleased to share that we have developed very
good links and coordination with Government institutes especially
Pakistan Science Foundation (PSF), Pakistan Science and
Technology Information Center (PASTIC), Pakistan Council for
Science and Technology (PCST), universities and media in the
form of Technology Times and Tech TV. We are now collaborator
and partner of so many national organizations (NSS, BAQI, TAS,
MMAP, and Science Society of UoP etc.) and also have good
linkages with international organizations including The Emerging
Nations Science Foundation (ENSF), Global Young Academy
(GYA), IASP, UN, AAAS, ASM and developing with many others. We
always look forward to have collaboration with all the bodies who are
working to promote education, science and technology in Pakistan.
The advisory board including Prof. M. Akhtar, Prof. N.M.
Butt, Prof. Kausar Abdullah Malik, Prof. Zabta Khan Shinwari,
Prof. M. Aslam Baig, Prof. Pervaiz Iqbal, Prof. Shahid Mansoor,
Prof. Shahid Qamar, Prof. M. Subhan Qureshi and Prof. Azra
Khanum are always there to help and guide us.
Prof. Anwar Nasim being the patron of NAYS was always
available with his full support and always encouraged and guided us.
He is also serving as President of Pakistan Academy of Sciences
(PAS) so hopefully NAYS will also have good linkage with PAS and
support for its activities in future. There are many other senior and
eminent scientists who are helping and guiding us time to time and
whenever we asked for help and guidance, they always supported us
and I would like to mention the name of Prof. Mujahid Kamran (VC,
University of the Punjab), Prof. Tayyab Husnain (Director
CEMB), and Prof. M.H. Qazi (VC University of Lahore) in
particular. There is long list of other supporters and due to length of
this writing it is hard to mention name of all. We are also deeply

thankful to administration of University of the Punjab for giving us

office place in the University and financial support for NAYS website.
Pakistan is blessed with both human and natural resources but
there is only need to utilize these resources properly. This is an era of
knowledge so we can only progress if we will excel in knowledge and
NAYS team is working in its full capacity to share knowledge and also
polish the expertise of our young scientists through its various
programs.
Presently we are facing enormous challenges in the form of
poverty, corruption, illiteracy, health issues, urban growth issues,
political instability, foreign interference, environmental issues etc. but
we are hopeful that with the blessings of God and work of people of
Pakistan, we will face these challenges boldly and Pakistan will be a
role model for other countries in future.
What we have done so far is very little and we have to do is lot
more but I am sure with the dynamic people that we have in NAYS
team and with the help and support from young and senior scientists
of Pakistan, we will have an active role in promotion and
popularization of science and technology in Pakistan.
(I apologies in advance if I forgot the name of any officials or important person who has
contributed for NAYS)

Long Live NAYS

Long Live Pakistan!!!

Aftab Ahmad Chattha

President NAYS Pakistan.