Pro-VCs named for UoP, UET

PESHAWAR: Prof Dr Mohammad Abid has been named as pro-vice-chancellor of the University of Peshawar and Prof Dr Qaisar Ali as pro-VC of the University of Engineering and Technology for two years.

Separate notifications to this effect were issued on Thursday and both the professors took charge as acting vice-chancellors of the two universities the same day as both the offices were laying vacant. Dr Qaiser also chaired a meeting of deans of faculties and heads of departments that was also attended by Dr Iftikhar Hussain, who has recently completed his tenure as vice-chancellor of the university. Dr Abid has already served as pro-vice-chancellor of the University of Peshawar for two years since February 2017 to 2019.

At that time too, he served most of the time – 18 months – as acting vice-chancellor of the university till arrival of Dr Mohammad Asif as fulltime vice-chancellor. Now that Dr Asif vacated the office on completion of his tenure, Dr Abid, being one of the senior most professors of the university, has been appointed as pro-vice chancellor again and thus he assumed the charge of acting vice-chancellor till arrival of regular vice-chancellor. Hailing from Kharkai village in Dargai area in Malakand, he got his early education from his native village. He did his matriculation from Government High School Dargai in 1977, completed his intermediate and graduation from Jahanzeb College Swat and got admission in Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad wherefrom he did his master’s in computer science in 1984. Soon after doing his MSc, Dr Abid joined the University of Peshawar as a lecturer. In 1986, he went to England for higher studies where he did his PhD on Artificial Intelligence with the sub-specialty of Natural Language Processing from Cranfield University. After completion of his PhD, he returned to Pakistan in 1990 and rejoined his department.

In 1992, he was promoted as assistant professor and in 1995, he became associate professor. The same year he went to Jordon where he served in the Al-Isra University as an associate professor from 1995 to 1998. In 2001, he joined the National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, Peshawar campus, as one of the founding directors. He served in this capacity until September 2004. Dr Abid was elevated to the position of professor in 2009. In 2015, he was made dean faculty of numerical and physical sciences.

He has served as chairman of the Department of Computer Science, University of Peshawar, for 13 years. Dr Abid also remained member of the university’s Senate and Syndicate for nearly 15 years. He has been member of Pakistan Computing Council for the last 12 years. The newly appointed pro-vice-chancellor of UET, Dr Qaisar Ali, would also serve as acting vice-chancellor of the university till the arrival of a regular one. Dr Qaiser completed his PhD in 2004 from UET, Peshawar. He became a professor in 2007 and took the charge of head of Civil Engineering Department in 2018. Having PhD in Earthquake Engineering, Prof Dr Qaisar Ali established the first-ever Earthquake Engineering Center of Pakistan which later on, was transformed into the National Center of Earthquake Engineering. He has also played a key role in formulating Pakistan Building Code-Seismic Provisions 2007 and developed international linkages and collaborative research programs with USA, Japan, and Italy for long-term seismic disaster mitigation strategy in Pakistan.