Dr. Umar Saif Status Notified As Advisor to Chief Minister Punjab

Lahore : The Vice Chancellor of Information Technology University Dr. Umar Saif has been given the status of Advisor to the Chief Minister Punjab with immediate effect. A notification No: SO (CAB-II) 2-11/2013 issued by the Chief Secretary Government of Punjab, Cabinet Wing’s Services & General Administration Department says that he will attend all Provincial Cabinet meetings.

Dr. Saif is currently serving as Vice Chancellor of ITU. He is the first ever computer scientist of international repute technocrat associated with the Punjab Cabinet. Dr. Umar Saif known for his work on using ICT solutions for developing-world problems.

He is the first VC of ITU, first Pakistani to receive a PhD in Computer Science from Cambridge and He was awarded Sitara-i-Imtiaz (SI), one of the highest civil awards by Government of Pakistan in 2014 in recognition of his services to Pakistan. Dr. Saif worked as a fulltime faculty member at LUMS during 2006-2013. In 2009, Dr. Saif became one of the few professors who were awarded permanent Tenure by LUMS. Dr. Saif’s work on grassroots technologies received the MIT Technovator Award in 2008 and he was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2010.

Dr. Saif is also first Pakistani among the list of the 35 “World’s Top Young Innovators for the year 2011,” named by the MIT Technology Review. By featuring in the list, Dr. Saif joined an elite group of researchers and technologists including the likes of Google’s Sergey Brin and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.

Dr. Saif worked and taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2001–2005). At MIT, he worked at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory where he was part of the core team that developed system technologies for the $50 Million Project Oxygen.

He also managed the $5 Million collaboration between University of Cambridge and MIT, funded by Cambridge-MIT Institute, on Pervasive Computing technologies. Saif’s work on Pervasive Computing received the prestigious Mark Weiser Award in 2008.