Welcome to Smogistan: Pakistan’s Air Quality Crisis

After over four months of meticulous data gathering and analysis, we’ve uncovered eye-opening insights into Pakistan’s air quality crisis. This talk invites you to join us on a journey through our research findings, exploring the causes of pollution, key statistics, and trends, as well as their devastating effects on human health.

Spoiler alert: the findings are dismal!

About the Speakers:

• Umair Shahid specializes in helping businesses keep their critical databases fast, reliable, and resilient. He partners with CTOs who demand robust, scalable, and cost-efficient database solutions to power their applications. As the founder of Stormatics, Umair leads a team of PostgreSQL experts delivering professional services through a signature methodology, honed over years of hands-on experience with critical production databases. Umair leverages reliable open-source as well as proprietary tooling in the PostgreSQL ecosystem to drive cost savings, improve performance, and ensure operational continuity.

  As a trusted expert in the global PostgreSQL community, Umair shares his expertise through talks at international conferences, live trainings, and webinars. He authors blogs that dive deep into the PostgreSQL technology and receive 10,000+ monthly visits.

  A resident of Islamabad, Umair is a concerned citizen who is passionate about driving awareness about air pollution and the impacts of air quality on human health.

• Dr. Taha Ali is Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the NUST School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (SEECS) in Islamabad. He has a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) followed by two postdocs, one from the Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organization in Australia and the second from Newcastle University, UK. His research interests include information security, cryptocurrencies and blockchain, green computing, software-defined networks, and election technology, etc.

  Dr. Taha has published numerous papers in elite conference venues and in Transactions-level journals. His work on cryptocurrencies has been impactful: in 2017, he introduced the Pakistan’s first dedicated MS course on cryptocurrencies and blockchain at NUST, which continues to run. Over the last few years, he has worked with various government ministries and committees to introduce secure election technologies in Pakistan and he has authored various policy reports and guidelines on this topic.

  In his free time, he contributes reviews and articles to local media (DAWN, Express Tribune, etc.).

This session is free and open to all. Just visit the venue to attend it.

The Black Hole
Plot 5H, Street 100, G-11/3, Islamabad.
Click here for Google Maps Location