• Academic

• Government

• Startups

• Media

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Academic 

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• At Cambridge, my thesis work focused on mobile operating systems and ubiquitous computing (long before mobile computing, IoT were in vogue).
   

• At MIT, I was part of the $50 Million Project Oxygen which imagined a future of computing beyond a desktop/laptop. A lot of technologies developed by the MIT Oxygen teams became precursors to pervasive computing technologies, devices and models we use every day. 
   

• In the past 15 years, I have worked mostly on technologies for  people living in the developing-world -- the "other" 5 Billion. This includes a fairly diverse body of work. Below is a selected list of projects which have had real-world impact: 
   

  • Early epidemic warning systems for Dengue
     

    • We built the world's largest Dengue monitoring system in Punjab, Pakistan. Our early epidemic warning system has recorded over 100 Million geo-tagged containment activities in a period of 7 years, and brought down  Dengue cases from over 30,000 in 2011 to a few dozen in subsequent years in Punjab.

      • Stories in NPR, Tech Review, NDTV.  
         

  • Low-cost disease surveillance in developing countries​​
     

    • In countries with no disease surveillance system in place, a simple telephone-based health helpline can generate insights to build an early epidemic system.

      • Stories in NPR, The Atlantic 
         

  • Improvement of child vaccination coverage
     

    • In Oct 2014, Pakistan had very low vaccination coverage, and was one of the few countries in the world which still had Polio. Our smartphone-based system for tracking vaccinations has recorded over 130 Million child vaccinations and improved the geographic coverage of routine vaccinations in Punjab from 18% to 88% in less than 2 years. The same system was replicated in 5 countries.

      • Story in Dawn News​
         

  • Low-cost e-learning models for school students
     

    • We digitised the STEM school curriculum of Pakistan, and made beautiful e-books, complete with thousands of lectures, animations, voice-overs, games, illustrations. Our project e-learn has 30 Science and Maths textbooks for Grade 1-12 which have been augmented with 13,047 Video Lectures, 592 Simulations , 2100 Audio minutes and 1,830 Animations. The eLearn application has been downloaded millions of times.  

    • We ran a randomised controlled trial (RCT) with schools in Pakistan and found that our model of e-learning almost doubled the the test scores of science and maths for school students.
        

  • Cellular networks for rural areas
     

    • Our rural base-station enables a village-level standalone cellular network. This work was supported by a Google Faculty Research Award (jointly with Berkeley). Work at Berkeley resulted in Endaga which was acquired by Facebook and led to Open Cellular.
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  • Poor man's BitTorrent  
     

    • The wildly popular peer-to-peer BitTorrent​ application is actually unfair to people with low-bandwidth Internet connections in the developing-world. Our BitTorrent client -- BitMate -- makes it fair and almost doubles the performance of low-bandwidth clients. BitMate has been downloaded over 43,000 times by users in 198 countries/regions. 

      •   Stories in New York Times, LeMonde France, Aid Workers Daily
         

  • Speech-based interfaces for low-literacy users
     

    • Due to the low levels of literacy ​in the developing-world, most of the Internet/Web remains inaccessible to them. We built a number of speech-based services to make an Internet of Orals accessible to them -- used by hundreds of thousands of people in Pakistan (and other countries).

      • Stories in MIT Technology Review, NPR
         

  • Peer-to-peer dialup networking for low-bandwidth users
     

    • Many of us take Internet access for granted, but in areas where there is no Internet accessibility, our system enabled computers to simply call each other to establish a dial-up peer-to-peer Internet.  ​
       

  • SMS-based social networking
     

    • My startup SMSall.pk became Pakistan's largest SMS Social network -- a twitter-like network which works entirely over SMS. Grew to 14 Million users in Pakistan. The paper describes models we used to automatically infer trending topics to catalyse conversations. ​

      • TR35 citation​
         

  • Crime investigation using cellular communication​
     

    • In the absence of a comprehensive crime investigation system in the developing-world, cellular communication patterns can provide critical clues for solving crimes. Our paper analyzes how our Call Data Record (CDR) analysis platform was useful for solving thousands of crimes in Pakistan. 

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  • ... and several others in the publications section  
     

Public Service

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• I had the privilege of digitising an entire government over a period of 7 years as Chairman PITB. We developed over 300 systems, including digitisation of land records, automation of police, local government services, tax collection systems, vaccination coverage, schools monitoring, court automation, hospital management systems etc. ​
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  • Summary of Punjab Digital Transformation projects and their impact     
     

• I established Pakistan's first research university (ITU) as its founding Vice Chancellor. This university has grown to over 12 academic programs, close to 80 faculty members and over 1,000 students. 
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  • Information Technology University
     

• I established Pakistan's first large startup incubator, Plan9, which helped bootstrap Pakistan's startup ecosystem. It has graduated over 200 startups, with a collective valuation of over $100 Million.
   

  • Plan9 Startup Incubator 
     

• I established Pakistan's largest online freelancing program called e-rozgaar and helped mainstream freelancing in the country. e-rozgaar has trained over 10,000 online freelancers who have earned over Rs. 200 Million
   

  • E-rozgaar Program ​

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Entrepreneurship 

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• I am currently focused on SurveyAuto.com, which is uber-ising field surveys, data collection and analytics using AI and Machine Learning. SurveyAuto has received funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. 
   

• As its Chief Digital Officer, I am digitally transforming Pakistan's largest media conglomerate, Jang/Geo Media Group. 
   

• I head Khudi Ventures, where we are replicating successful consumer Internet products in Pakistan market, including niche social networks, online advertising platforms, digital payments, e-commerce etc. 
   

• I have founded several startups, including SMSall.pk (Pakistan's largest SMS social network, grew to 14 Million users), See'n'report (Pakistan's first citizen journalism platform) and BumpIn (link exchange).
   

Media

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• I host a TV show on Pakistan largest TV channel, Geo News. My show, called "Geo tu Aisay", invites inspiring Pakistanis to share their story in a TED-style talk. When it's running, it's one of the most watched TV shows in Pakistan.   
   

• I was part of "Idea Croron Ka" on Neo TV, which became Pakistan's equivalent of Shark Tank.
   

• I brought MIT Technology Review to Pakistan and served as its founding Editor-in-Chief (2014-2018) to promote high-quality science and tech journalism in Pakistan. 

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