Fluid Mechanics Group, Quaid-i-Azam University...is there any need to feel despair?

We as Pakistanis are usually subjected to a very harsh criticism regarding our supposedly lack of research aptitude. In this way, we are constantly told that we are destined to live at the bottom of food chain of human development since we are nowhere in the research. By the way, a lot of what is said is actually a fact and we need to improve ourselves. But the rhetoric and its systematic method is quite depressing. A few years back, I too subscribed to this opinion and was quite pessimistic about my future as an individual and as a nation. But then, fortunately, I cam under the supervision of some very enlightened teachers such as Dr. Aftab A. Maroof, Dr. Anwar Mirza, Dr. Abdul Rauf Baig and Dr. Arshad A. Shahid. At the same time, I had company of some very bright fellows who later turned out to be very illustrious PhD doctors such as Dr. Arfan Jaffar, Dr. Ayyaz Hussain, Dr. M. Amjad Iqbal and others. What is common amongst all of these is that with the exception of one or two cases, all above mentioned names have one thing in common. All of them are garduates of Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad. After meeting all of these gentlemen and working under or alongside them, I realized how much this great seat of learning is under appreciated amongst us Pakistanis. What a gem, we have in the form of this university and how much this university needs to be promoted and upgraded. Indeed, Quaid-i-Azam University ahs potential to become the stanford of Pakistan and it will come out even better one day with the grace of god.

The inspiration for today's blog came as I was going through various research groups set up at this university and I cam across this vibrant reserach group titled as Fluid Mechanics Group (http://www.fmg.org.pk) or FMG. Just look at the PhD produced under the banner of this group (http://www.fmg.org.pk/Ph.D.Produced.php). The list is long enough that you may not expect. So just to give a shock therapy session, I shall just copy the whole list below....

1.      Muhammad Ayub                           PhD(1992)

Thesis Title:        Diffraction of acoustic waves by half planes
Supervisor:         Prof. Dr. Saleem Asghar 

2. Masud Ahmed                                   PhD(1992)

Thesis Title:        Propagation of the love type waves in inhomogenous media
Supervisor:         Prof. Dr. Saleem Asghar 

3. Bashir Ahmed                                   PhD(1994)

Thesis Title:        Scattering of spherical acoustic waves from an absorbing    half-plane
Supervisor:         Prof. Dr. Saleem Asghar

4. Akhtar Hussain                                 PhD(1995)

Thesis Title:        Diffraction of acoustic waves
Supervisor:         Prof. Dr. Saleem Asghar

5. Tasawar Hayat                                  PhD(2000)

Thesis Title:        Scattering of waves by half-planes with mixed boundary conditions
Supervisor:         Prof. Dr. Saleem Asghar

6. Tahira Haroon                                   PhD(2002)

Thesis Title:        Non-coaxial rotations of porous disks for unsteady MHD flows of Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids
Supervisor:         Prof. Dr. Saleem Asghar

7. Sohail Nadeem                                  PhD(2004)

Thesis Title:        Oscillatory flows of magnetohydrodynamic non-Newtonian fluids
Supervisors:        Prof. Dr. Saleem Asghar and Dr. Tasawar Hayat

8. Masood Khan                                    PhD(2005)

Thesis Title:        Some flow problems of an Oldroyd fluid: Homotopy analysis method and numerical computations
Supervisors:        Prof. Dr. Muhammad Ayub and Dr. Tasawar Hayat

9. Khalid Hanif                                       PhD(2005)

Thesis Title:        Accelerated flows of viscoelastic fluids with no-slip and partial slip conditions
Supervisor:         Prof. Dr. Saleem Asghar

10. Muhammad Raheel Mohyudin          PhD(2005)

Thesis Title:        Inverse solution of Rivlin-Ericksen fluids
Supervisor:         Prof. Dr. Saleem Asghar

11. Muhammad Sajid                             PhD(2006)

Thesis Title:        Similar and non-similar analytic solutions for steady flows of differential type fluids
Supervisor:         Dr. Tasawar Hayat

12. Rahmat Ellahi                                   PhD(2006)

Thesis Title:        Some steady and unsteady flow problem involving Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids
Supervisor:         Dr. Tasawar Hayat

13. Zahid Hussain                                  PhD(2007)

Thesis Title:        Rotating disk non-Newtonian fluids
Supervisor:         Prof. Dr. Saleem Asghar

14. Faisal Shahzad                                 PhD(2007)

Thesis Title:        Non-Newtonian fluid flows in rotating and non-rotating frames
Supervisor:         Prof. Dr. Muhammad Ayub

15. Muhammad Mudassar Gulzar           PhD(2007)

Thesis Title:        Flows of third grade fluid in rotating frame
Supervisors:        Prof. Dr. Saleem Asghar and Prof. Dr. Muhammad Ayub

16. Ambreen Afsar Khan                        PhD(2008)

Thesis Title:        Effect of magnetic field on the peristaltic motion of fluid
Supervisor:         Dr. Tasawar Hayat

17. Iftikhar Ahmad                                 PhD(2008)

Thesis Title:        Solutions of unsteady flows over a strectching sheet using         Homotopy analysis method.

Supervisor:         Prof. Dr. Muhammad Ayub and Dr. M. Sajid

18. Muzhar Hussain                              PhD(2008)

Thesis Title:        Transient flows in a porous medium
Supervisor:         Dr. Tasawar Hayat

19. Tariq Javed                                     PhD(2008)

Thesis Title:        Homotopy solutions for flows in a rotating frame
Supervisor:         Dr. Tasawar Hayat

20. Sher Baz Khan                                PhD(2008)

Thesis Title:        Rotating flows of non-Newtonian fluids in a porous space
Supervisor:         Dr. Tasawar Hayat

21. Nasir Ali                                          PhD(2008)

Thesis Title:        Mathematical models of peristaltic transport involving non-Newtonian fluids
Supervisor:         Dr. Tasawar Hayat

22. Haider Zaman                                 PhD(2009)

Thesis Title:        Flows induced by a stretching surface
Supervisor:         Dr. M. Ayub

23. Zaheer Abbas                                  PhD(2009)

Thesis Title:        Numerical and series solutions for flows of non-linear fluids
Supervisor:         Dr. Tasawar Hayat

24. Muhammad Ramzan                        PhD(2010)

Thesis Title:        Application of Wiener-Hopf technique on diffraction problems
Supervisor:         Dr. Muhammad Ayub

25. Khadija Maqbool                              PhD(2010)

Thesis Title:        Some simple flows of non-Newtonian fluids
Supervisor:         Dr. Tasawar Hayat

and that is not all...I shall not dare to paste the whole list of impact factor publications this group has made during last 15 years so I shall just give the link (http://www.fmg.org.pk/publications.php)

So...why am I writing all this??? Only because these achievements by us give us beliefe that we are not all just a downtrodden and long forgotten story. We have people and institutions amongst us who know their duties and responsibilities and deliver only their duties with any care for reward. Groups like FMG, universities like Quaid-i-Azam Universities and people like Dr. Aftab Maroof, Dr. Anwar Mirza, Dr. Baig, Dr. Arfan, Dr. Ayyaz, Dr. Tasawar Hayat, Dr. M. Ayub, Dr. Saleem Asghar need a big salute from all of us. May universities like QAU and groups like FMG always prosper.