SBASSE is pleased to share the inaugural winners of the Syed Babar Ali Research Awards set up through a generous gift from the Babar Ali Foundation. The awards are aimed at recognizing the most potentially high-impact work being carried out by our current PhD students.

Amina Qadir (Biology): Defeating Hepatitis C, one N-S-5-b at a time!

PhD advisor: Dr. Syed Shahzad ul Hussan (biology)

Virus---we’ve all probably heard enough of this word already, but one word we’ve probably not heard of is NS5b (pronounced: Enn-Ess-Five-Bee). This protein found on the hepatitis C virus (HCV), and its variants, are a prominent target for therapy. The work aims at studying the NS5, with the hope of actually putting a stop to unwanted comebacks from this terrible infection in humans!

Discovery of Hepatitis C virus (HCV) RNA dependent RNA polymerase (NS5b) inhibitors: https://bit.ly/3fGQ5u4

Adeem Aslam (Electrical Engineering): Music, Wi-Fi and ‘The Big Bang’

PhD advisor: Dr. Zubair Khalid (electrical engineering)

We humans love to make sense of stuff around us---and we want our machines to do the same for us! When acoustic signals start making sense, we can listen to beautiful music; when wireless signals make sense, we get hooked to high speed internet; and when signals from the big bang start making sense, we end up contemplating our very existence. What a wonderful connection between signal and interpretation. Just like you can’t accurately tell the exact 3D build and structure of a human by just looking at their 2D shadow, we lose information when we lose a dimension. Imagine how much more can be understood about a phenomena if we could understand signals in 3D? This is what Adeem Aslam also wants to find out: about the big bang, Wi-Fi and music! 

Multiresolution Analysis on the Sphere for Applications in Cosmology: https://bit.ly/30JdUwY

Abdul Rehman Aslam (Electrical Engineering): Tracking emotions---a potential breakthrough!

PhD advisor: Dr. Awais bin Altaf (electrical engineering)

Every child deserves to reach its full potential and responsible members of the society need to help them deal with difficulties and barriers during this process. One of these barriers is ASD: Autism Spectrum Disorder, which manifests itself in more children in Pakistan than we’d be comfortable knowing, and one such responsible member of the society is Abdul Rehman Aslam. Rehman wants to use cutting edge technology to sense early symptoms of ASD by monitoring brain activity of the affected child using a child-friendly headband and gauging emotional states during learning periods. This method will bypass extensive child and parent interviewing and behavioral monitoring, which can be a psychologically tiring for both. We cautiously think this will be the world’s first ASD assistance technology that might become a breakthrough for ASD diagnostics. 

Design & Analysis of an On-Chip Processor for the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) Children Assistance Using their Emotions: https://bit.ly/3gZrYbH

Faiza Iftikhar (Electrical Engineering): Lab testing at the home with optical cavities

PhD advisor: Dr. Imran Cheema (electrical engineering)

You’ve been there. We’ve all been there. Medical tests! How amazing would it be if you could have your medical tests conducted with great reliability and at a very low cost? Would you be interested? Say hello to Faiza Iftikhar, PhD student in the Electrical Engineering Department who’s working on the technology that can make this happen! The key technology is optical and employs cavities with highly reflective mirrors on both ends. Such a cavity is called a Fabry-Perot etalon and the idea is to use these microdevices for detecting analytes with remarkable sensitivity and ultra-high resolution.

Multistage Fabry-Perot fiber etalons at the exceptional points for sensing applications: https://bit.ly/2XQntIH