Shaima Qureshi was one of the recipients of JK Young Scientist Award conferred upon ten scientists from Kashmir valley at the recently concluded Science Congress at Kashmir University. Bilal Handoo delves into her life which has spanned from New York to Rajasthan.

Shaima Qureshi
Shaima Qureshi

Girls are shining in academics like never before in Kashmir. For the moment, it appears that the feminist power is dominating a society where education was once considered the heritage of males. Keeping this perception alive, a tech-savvy girl from National Institute of Technology (NIT), Srinagar, was recently awarded for being one of the top ten scientists of Jammu and Kashmir at the recently held Science Congress at Kashmir University.

Shaima Qureshi, a resident of Lal Bazar, Srinagar, was honoured for her research on networking patents, computer hybridization and mobile networks. Her husband received the JK young scientist in 2009. “I am researching on the network security,” said Shaima who is working as an assistant professor at NIT since 2008. Before starting her career as a teacher, the young Shaima worked as a software quality engineer at Massachusetts, US-based software firm. She has also worked as a lab instructor at Syracuse University, New York.

The visibly cheerful Shaima proved her mettle initially when she topped 12th JK Board Exam in 1999. She also bagged 6th position in her matriculation exam. She did her BE in Computer Science (Honors) from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, Rajasthan. “Finally I went to the US to complete MS in Computer Science in December 2006 from Syracuse University,” said Shaima.

Apart from being a member of Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers, Inc. and the Institute of Engineers, India, Shaima has been a participant in a short-term course on “Internet Technologies” at National Institute of Technical Teachers’ Training and Research, Chandigarh, India.

“I participated in short term course on ‘Design and Development of Digital Libraries using Dspace’ in 2010 at National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources, New Delhi, India,” she said.  She was also the participant of short-term summer school on “Power Quality Problems & Their Solutions” sponsored by the ministry of human resource development organized by department of electrical engineering, NIT in 2008.

At NIT, Shaima organized a number of workshops since her arrival on recent trends in engineering and technology and held an interactive session for Entrepreneurship Development with Kumar Ankit in 2011. Keeping her zeal alive for the workshops, Shaima organized World Telecommunication Day and Information Security Day at NIT in 2009. During 2008, she organized a committee on 4th JK Science Congress and National Education Day in the same year.

Shaima was a participant at World Environment Day organized by the Institution of Engineers (India) and IPR Awareness programme organized by IPR Cell, NIT, Kurukshetra and Srinagar at NIT Srinagar in 2008. This young scientist of Kashmir valley has seventeen research papers of international repute to her credit.

She has innovated a technology titled ”A method to hibernate computer into external storage and making its OS Portable” for which she filed an international patent at Patent Office, New Delhi on 07 Sep, 2012. She also has an Indian patent for her another invention titled “A method to transform a PC into several networking devices” which she filed on 08 Sep, 2009.

Her professional skills speak about the networking genius residing in her. Not only this, she is also well versed with Operating Systems like MS-DOS, Windows (95/98/2000/XP/Vista), Mac, Solaris, AIX ,HP UNIX, Database Oracle, SQL, DB2 and MS Access, she is equally expert in programming languages like C, Java, JavaScript, Visual Basics, HTML, XML, XSL, ASP.Net, ALP Packages MS-Office, Lotus Notes, Crystal Reports and Silk Test.

Her never-ending appetite for research and academics has showered many honours and awards upon her. Apart from being the recipient of JK young scientist 2010 award, she was previously conferred with Graduation Award from Syracuse University in 2005-06.

“I am also the recipient of a merit-based scholarship at BITS, Pilani during 2000-04, besides recipient of a gold medal from Jammu and Kashmir State Board of School Education (J&K, India),” she said. Apart from her deep love for academia, this young mother of a nine-year-old baby has wide interests. She is the joint secretary of “Kongposh”, an Association of Kashmiris at BITS, Pilani (India). “I was also vice-captain at Girls Cricket Team at BITS, Pilani during my graduation days,” she said.

She has also volunteered for Child Nurture and Relief, Barazulla, Srinagar and is also a member of the editorial team of the magazine ‘Yembarzal – Reflections on Kashmir’. Currently pursuing her doctorate at NIT, she feels sad about the departure of talented minds from Kashmir to greener pastures, “The big challenge today is to retain the best brains in the state,” she said.

8 COMMENTS

  1. the best thing about Shaima mam is that she is a very good and pious human. She is regular at her prayers and always in Hijab. A real icon for the Muslim girls.

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