Dean’s Message
It gives me great personal satisfaction to welcome you to the newly established Faculty of Computing at the Lahore University of Biological & Applied Sciences (UBAS). Having spent the better part of more than two decades in computer science classrooms and research and, more recently, leading product and engineering teams in the AI industry, I have come to see this moment for what it is, a rare chance to build a computing faculty from first principles, rather than inherit one.
My own path has moved between the classroom and the field. I have taught multiple courses to hundreds of students, led a research group working across video analytics, biometrics, medical imaging and natural language processing, and later stepped into industry to help build AI-enabled products end to end. That back and forth has left me with a firm conviction, which is that computing education is at its best when it stays close to real problems, and at its weakest when it treats theory and application as separate tracks. That conviction shapes how we are building this faculty.
Our programs in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and Data Science are designed around that same principle which is a solid grounding in mathematics, algorithms and systems, paired from an early stage with hands on project work, research exposure and direct contact with industry. Students here will work on problems that draw from several domains at once, intelligent systems and automation, natural language processing for local languages, computer vision and surveillance, cybersecurity, and yes, healthcare technology which is an area close to my own recent industry work, and one where UBAS’s roots in biological and applied sciences give us a genuine head start that few computing faculties elsewhere can claim. But it is one strand among several, not the whole story as our graduates should be equally ready to build the next fintech platform, the next agricultural sensor network, or the next enterprise AI system.
As we assemble this faculty from the ground up, our priority is deliberately old fashioned, good teaching, honestly assessed, and a research culture where senior and junior faculty mentor each other as much as they mentor students. I have been fortunate enough to be recognized for teaching over the years, and if there is one thing that recognition taught me, it is that students remember the teachers who took the time to explain the “why,” not just the “how.” That is the standard I want this faculty to hold itself to.
Whether you are a prospective student weighing your options, a researcher looking for collaborators, or an industry partner exploring what our graduates and faculty can offer, I would genuinely welcome the conversation. We are building something new here, and I would like you to be part of shaping it.
Warm regards,
Dr. Usama Ijaz Bajwa
Dean, Faculty of Computing,
Lahore University of Biological & Applied Sciences (UBAS)
