Atta-ur-Rahman, arguably Pakistan’s best chemist and academic shared a link of an online learning website containing thousands of free online courses from reputed universities across the world.
While people are confined to their homes during the COVID-19 pandemic, he encouraged the Pakistani people to divest their time in learning new things and expanding their skill set.
COVID-19 has forced shut schools, colleges, and universities, which has made it difficult for students to keep up with their studies.
The website ‘lej4learning.com.pk’ gives you access to the world’s largest library resources and provides courses from some of the world’s top universities like Stanford, Yale, and Harvard, etc.
The LEJ National Science Information Center (ICCBS) at the University of Karachi launched this program. ‘LEJ Knowledge Hub’ is dedicated to open learning, and contains thousands of video lectures to educate people on different subjects.
Accolades received
Atta-ur-Rahman is an expert in the field of natural product chemistry in South Asia, with over 1142 publications in several fields of organic chemistry including 775 research publications, 43 international patents, 70 chapters in books and 254 books published largely by major U.S. and European presses (h index 55).
He serves as the Editor in Chief of several peer reviewed journals including the Current Medicinal Chemistry and Current Organic Chemistry.
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He has been a Fellow of the Royal Society since July 2006 and has served as the President of Pakistan Academy of Sciences.
In recognition of his contributions in the field of organic chemistry, he has been conferred with four Government of Pakistan civil awards including Nishan-e-Imtiaz (2002), Hilal-i-Imtiaz (1998), Sitara-i-Imtiaz (1991) and Tamgha-e-Imtiaz (1983).
Inauguration of same research Center established in my honour in China pic.twitter.com/gy5U1xrHVd
— Atta-ur-Rahman (@1964atta) July 25, 2020
He has also been conferred the high Civil Award of the Government of Austria “Grosse Goldene Ehrenzeichen am Bande” (2007) in recognition of his eminent contributions to uplift higher education in Pakistan and the close linkages developed with Austria.
He was the first recipient of the Khwarizmi International Award and the first Muslim to receive the UNESCO Science Prize (1999). He was conferred the highest national award for foreigners, the Friendship Award, by the Government of China.
As of 28 March 2016, he co-chairs the United Nations Committee on Science, Technology and Innovation for the UNESCAP.
In a recent national ranking, the Pakistan Council for Science and Technology ranked him as the top among chemistry professional of Pakistan.
Since the HEC’s reforms have been carried out in 2002, HEC has received praise from the international higher education observers. Atta-ur-Rahman, founding Chairman of HEC, has received number of prestigious international awards for the remarkable transformation of the higher education sector under his leadership.
Praise for Atta-ur-Rahman’s work
German academic, Wolfgang Voelter of University of Tübingen in Germany over viewed the performance of HEC under the leadership of Prof. Atta-ur-Rahman and described the reforms in HEC as “A miracle happened.”
After teaching and visiting in 15 universities of Pakistan, Voelter wrote that the “scenario of education, science and technology in Pakistan has changed dramatically, as never before in the history of the country.
The chairperson of the Senate Standing Committee on Education recently announced the first 6 years of HEC under Prof. Atta-ur-Rahman as “Pakistan’s golden period in higher education”.
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Recently Thomson Reuters in an independent assessment of Pakistan’s progress in international publications has acknowledged that in the last decade there has been a fourfold increase in international publications and a tenfold growth in highly cited papers, statistics that were better than the BRIC countries.
GVS News Desk