Javaid Laghari

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Javaid Laghari (Urdu: جاويد لغارى; TI is a Pakistani American who was previously professor of electrical and computer engineering, science and technology administrator, senator, and is the author of five books and over 600 publications, and numerous invited talks and interviews. He has served as the Chairperson of the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan from Aug 2009 to Aug 2013 with the status of a Federal Minister.^[1] He is an academic, administrator, energy consultant, and a space scientist at heart, and is a staunch supporter of technocratic democracy in Pakistan. He was elected Senator of Pakistan from the Pakistan Peoples Party. Laghari has been a member of the Pakistan Peoples Party, a secular democratic party, was the Deputy Coordinator of the PPP Central Policy Planning Committee and authored the Election Manifesto, which eventually led the party to an election victory in 2009 elections. As Chair of the Energy and Power Committee, he drafted the Energy Policy for the incoming government and served on key Senate Standing Committees, including Energy and Power, Information Technology, and Information and Broadcast. He also chaired the Senate in the absence of Chairperson Senate. He has served as the Science Advisor to Benazir Bhutto during her second and last Prime ministerial term, and has been associated with Bhutto long before becoming Science and Technology Advisor to Bhutto. Dr. Laghari established the Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology (SZABIST) along with Benazir Bhutto and was appointed as the first and founding President of SZABIST. Prior to SZABIST, he was the Director of the Space Power Institute, Director of Graduate Studies, Chairman of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Associate Dean at the State University of New York at Buffalo where he served as among the youngest tenured full professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He has also served as Commissioner at the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research (UAE) and as Coordinator General at COMSTECH, which is the Coordinating Body of all Science and Technology Ministers of the 57 OIC (Organization of Islamic Countries) Countries . Dr. Javaid Laghari is currently an Energy Consultant and Senior Advisor to several Corporate Groups and Universities in the US, and lives in Houston, TX.

Dr. Laghari was elected as Senator to the Senate Secretariat in 2006 for a six-year term and resigned in July 2009. During his Senate term, he also officiated as Acting chairman Senate. He specialises in Pulsed Power and Energy Storage Devices, Higher Education, Information Technology, Space Power Technology and Leadership and has published over 120 research papers in refereed journals and presented over 70 papers at International Conferences. He is also the author of five books, "Reflections on Benazir Bhutto", "Leaders of Pakistan", "Creative Leadership", "Challenges in Higher Education" and his most recent being a fiction thriller "Ifrit" about nuclear terrorism in Pakistan which is currently under consideration for film production. Laghari gained a national and international reputation during the "fake degree" saga of the parliamentarians in Pakistan in summer of 2010, and again during the elections of 2013, when he took a principled stand and had HEC verify the degrees of all parliamentarians. As a result, a large number of parliamentarians were disqualified from the parliament. During the process, he received multiple threats, including to his life, and his younger brother, Farooq Laghari, a bureaucrat, was arrested by the Sindh government.

Early life[]

Laghari was born in Hyderabad. He attended the Sindh University where he enrolled in the Department of Electrical Engineering, and received his BEng in Electrical Engineering. Laghari then travelled to Ankara, Turkey and completed his post graduate studies at the Middle East Technical University and received his MS in electrical engineering. He then travelled to United States and joined University at Buffalo, The State University of New York where he received his PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 1980.

US research work[]

Laghari worked in the United States as a researcher and engineer at NASA, the Air Force Research Laboratory of AFOSR, the Office of Naval Research, the Naval Research Lab, the Defense Nuclear Agency, the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, the Strategic Defense Initiative, Hughes Aircraft and the Boeing Aerospace Company. He was chairman of the 1992 IEEE International Conference on High Voltage Engineering and has organised numerous International Conferences and chaired a large number of Sessions and Workshops in the United States.

Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission[]

Laghari was the chairman of the Technical Standards Committee on Radiation Effects at the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission. He led the Pakistani delegation on nuclear safety at the United Nations. He was the representative on the United States Activities Board on Man and Radiation. He attended the NATO Advanced Study Institute on Space Systems and the NATO Advanced Study Institute on Fast Electrical and Optical Diagnostics. Laghari was also the Chairman of the National Conference on Emerging Technologies 2004 (NCET2004) held in Pakistan in December 2004.

Public service[]

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Laghari was elected a Senator from Sindh as technocrat in 2006 but resigned in 2009 to become Chairman Higher Education Commission with the status of a Federal Minister which he served till 2013. Laghari has been a Member of the Ministry of Science and Technology Human Resource Development Committee, the Private Export Software Board, the Pakistan Council for Science and Technology and The Sindh Information Technology Board. He is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery, a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a member of the New York Academy of Sciences and sits on the Executive Committee of the and the Executive Committee of the Federation of the Universities of the Islamic World.

Laghari also served as Acting Coordinator General of COMSTECH in 2012 for about 9 months.

Laghari has delivered over 37 keynote lectures, including at The Clinton School of Public Service, The Brookings Institution, Woodrow Wilson International Center, The School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), The European Union Parliamentary Conference and the Conference of the OIC Ministers of Higher Education & Scientific Research. The lecture at the Clinton School (out of 1000 lectures so far) has been the 3rd most watched program online.

In addition to the 37 keynote lectures, Laghari has delivered 117 Chief Guest addresses, 61 invited lectures, 47 interviews published and over 88 TV interviews. He has also published three books on Leadership, and 7 of his articles have appeared in Newsweek magazine.

He is the recipient of the Distinguished Leadership Award, 1987, and is the recipient of the 1994 IEEE Award for Leadership and Dedicated Services and the 1999 "Tamgha-e-Imtiaz" award conferred by the President of Pakistan.

Laghari is listed in the American Men and Women of Science, Who's Who in Science and Engineering, Who's Who in the East and Who's Who in the World.

Publications[]

Bibliography (books)[]

• Challenges in Higher Education", June 2021, Amazon Publishing, ISBN 979-851-8200-623
• Ifrit (31 January 2019), Austin Macauley, ISBN 978-1528906623
• Reflections on Benazir Bhutto,‟ SZABIST Publication, ISBN 978-969-8666-13-2, February 2008.
• Leaders of Pakistan, SZABIST Publication, ISBN 978-969-8666-14-9, August 2009.
• Creative Leadership, Paramount Publishing, ISBN 978-969-494-846-1, Sept 2011.
• "Dielectric Films for High Temperature High Voltage Power Electronics", Materials for Electronic Packaging, written by J. R. Laghari and edited by Deborah D. L. Chung, Butterworth Publishers, 1994.

Selected research papers and patents[]

• Surface Flashover of Spacers in Compressed Gas Insulated Systems, J. R. Laghari and A. H. Qureshi, IEEE Transactions on Electrical Insulation, Vol. EI-16, No. 5, 1981,
• A Review of Particle-Contaminated Gas Breakdown, J. R. Laghari and A. H. Qureshi, "IEEE Transactions on Electrical Insulation, Vol. EI-16, No. 5, 1981, pp. 388–398.
• Spacer Flashover in Compressed Gases, J. R. Laghari, IEEE Transactions on Electrical Insulation, Vol. EI-20, vol. No. 1.
• Testing and Evaluation of Insulating Films: Part I: Description of Test Facilities at the University at Buffalo, J. R. Laghari, IEEE Electrical Insulation, Vol. 2, No.6, 1986.
• Testing and Evaluation of Insulating Films: Part II: Test Results using Facilities at the University at Buffalo, J. R. Laghari, IEEE Electrical Insulation, Vol. 2, No. 6, 1986.
• A Review of ac and Pulse Capacitor Technology, J. R. Laghari, Applied Physics Communications, Vol. 6, No. 2, 1986.
• On the Design of Field-Controlled Multi-Layer Foil Insulation, S. Cygan and J. R. Laghari, IEEE Transactions on Electrical Insulation, Vol. EI-22, No. 1, 1987, pp. 107–108.
• Multifactor Stress Aging of Dielectrics", J. R. Laghari, Applied Physics Communications, Vol. 7, No. 1, 1987.
• Repetitive Phenomena in Dielectics M. Treanor, J. R. Laghari and A. K. Hyder, IEEE Transactions on Electrical Insulation, Vol. EI-22, No. 4, 1987, pp. 517–522.
• Dependence of Electrical Strength on Thickness, Area and Volume of Polypropylene", S. Cygan and J. R. Laghari, IEEE Transactions on Electrical Insulation, Vol. EI-22, No. 6, 1987.

References[]

External links[]

• Personal web page of Javed Laghari