My Experience At Nust, Pakistan

My Experience at NUST, Pakistan: People say, first impression is the last impression, but I am happy to report that I made an exception in this case.

I was quite excited, when I arrived at Islamabad airport on July 7th. What will the next two months bring? What about my work with NUST? Will I get to know the country? How about Pakistani people? And will the country be safe? Many questions were in mind while arriving and needed to be answered in the following 9 weeks. Talking with friends before my internship, most of them did not really know about Pakistan, some of them warned me, that it might be unsafe to go there !!. But with all of that my passion increased when I read about National University of Science and Technology (NUST), the place where I got my internship in, about its rank and its high quality of education. After arriving to Islamabad, I found what people say about Pakistan is just illusions, The city is a piece of art, people are so kind, the university has a huge campus with high quality and advanced facilities and a great academic environment.

Work: During my internship I worked in Wireless Sensor Networks Field on Wireless and Secure Networks (WiSNET) Research Lab at the NUST School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (SEECS), National University of Sciences & Technology (NUST), which has been ranked by the recent US Times Higher Education Ranking among the top 400, and one of the best universities in the region.

After spending the first few days reading and getting introduced to Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) Field, I started my actual work on a widely-used sensor mote operating system,

TinyOS, and developed communication applications on these devices. Then I also focused on energy efficient routing in WSNs and medical sensors in specific. My time in NUST was not all about work as well. The people here at the SEECS were real cool guys. I had not yet met most of them, having only interacted with my research Lab. Group. But what I found from them that they are a nice example of people who combine between work and fun to increase the efficiency of work.

Life outside work:

During my internship, I lived in Hostel of NUST Campus, Islamabad. I used to go around in the weekends with my Pakistani friends, walking on Town’s square, visiting natural places, restaurants, and markets. I have visited many places in Pakistan like Faisal Mosque, Margalla hills, Heritage Museum, Islamabad Zoo, National Parliament of Pakistan, and a lot of beautiful place. All what I can say is “Islamabad is Charming”.

Conclusion: In conclusion, I have to thank IAESTE for Giving me this great Opportunity, and Prof. Arshad Ali who was my coordinator , and I have also to attest both of my supervisors (Dr. Ali Khayam who was my senior supervisor and Mr. Adnan Iqbal who was my immediate supervisor) at WiSNET for the good job. I really appreciate the way I have been guided through this internship programme with WISNET, beginning from the opportunity to take the time I needed to refresh and expand my knowledge in several issues, over a somehow protected period where I could discover and learn to value my new working environment, and finally earned the confidence to deal with assignments myself. It is through them that I did enjoy my work everyday.

With Best Regards, Muhammad K. Mustafa