South Asia Investor Review

A team of undergraduate students representing Peshawar has won a silver medal in a genetic engineering competition organized recently by the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Foundation in Boston, Massachusetts. Source: iGEM Peshawar Facebook Page iGEM Team: The team was made up of students from several cities and towns across Pakistan including Lahore, Attock, Islamabad, Multan, Faisalabad, Khyber Agency, Nowshera, Charsadda, Peshawar, Swabi and Mardan. The team was hosted by Institute of Integrative Biosciences of CECOS University of IT and Emerging Sciences Peshawar. It was sponsored by Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP)’s Directorate of Science and Technology, according to  media reports . The team's silver-medal-winning 2017 entry is a  genetically engineered  fish called " Reporter Fish " that can detect five different heavy metals and change color to indicate the presence of metal contamination in the water. It used an Arduino electronic circu...

A 3-person team of Pakistani students, including a female student from Islamabad's National University of Science and Technology (NUST), won first place in a contest organized by Stanford Center of Longevity. The team's entry is a device they designed and prototyped that enables tremor patients to perform daily routine tasks. The Purpose:  The purpose of the contest is to encourage innovation to help improve the quality of life of aging populations in the West and the rest of the world. The 2017 Stanford Longevity Design Challenge had the following goals: 1. Create well-designed, practical solutions that address key issues associated with aging 2. Encourage a new generation of students to become knowledgeable about aging issues 3. Provide promising designers with a path to drive change in the world 2017 Stanford Longevity Design Challenge Winners The Winners:  NUST's Hooriya Anam, Awais Shafique, and Arsalan Javed defeated teams from around the world wi...

Understanding the need to design for extreme affordability is giving birth to a new generation of entrepreneurs. These are entrepreneurs with a social conscience who are motivated by the desire to do good and do well at the same time. They are finding new ways to empower the poor by satisfying their basic needs for safe water and electricity in emerging markets. According to Wikipedia definition, a social entrepreneur is someone who recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a venture to make social change. Unlike a business entrepreneur who typically measures performance in profit and return, a social entrepreneur assesses success in terms of the impact s/he has on society. While social entrepreneurs often work through nonprofits and citizen groups, many work in the private and governmental sectors. The main aim of a social entrepreneurship as well as social enterprise is to further social and environmental goals. This need not be...