ISLAMABAD: Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaarul Haq Kakar has appointed Dr Umar Saif – a computer scientist as the caretaker federal minister for Information Technology and Telecom.

Dr Saif has extensive experience in academia, management, consulting, and entrepreneurship in the IT sector. He is the founder and CEO of aiSight.ai, the chief digital officer of the Jang Group, and the CEO of Khudi Ventures (Pakistan’s largest Venture Builder). He is also serving as an advisor to the United Nations Development Programme in Pakistan.

Saif received his academic training from LUMS, Cambridge, and MIT. He did his BSc (Hons) from LUMS (1998), PhD from the University of Cambridge (2001), and Post-Doctorate from MIT (2002). Saif received executive education from the Harvard Kennedy School on Global Leadership and Public Policy in 2013.

He has served in many important positions in the country’s IT sector. Saif has served as chairman Punjab Information Technology Board and vice chancellor of Information Technology University. In 2014, in recognition of his services to Pakistan, he was awarded Sitara-i-Imtiaz (SI), one of the highest civil awards by the government of Pakistan.

He was the first Pakistani to be named as one of the top 35 young innovators in the world (TR35) in 2011 by MIT Technology Review. He was the first Pakistani to receive the prestigious Google Faculty Research Award in 2011.

He was selected as a Young Global Leader (YGL) by the World Economic Forum in 2010. Saif is a recipient of the MIT Technovator Award in 2008, Mark Weiser Award in 2008, IDG CIO Technology Pioneer Award in 2008, and Digital Inclusion Award from Microsoft Research in 2006. His papers have received best paper awards in ACM CHI 2013 and IEEE Percom 2008.

During his doctorate studies, Saif was a Trinity College Overseas Scholar and Commonwealth Scholar at the University of Cambridge. Saif received his PhD at the age of 23 years from the University of Cambridge and was the first Pakistani to receive a PhD in computer science from Cambridge.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023