Dr. Umar Saif, a professor at LUMS, has been recognized by MIT amongst 35 top young innovators in the world for his innovations in the field of IT. He is very well known for developing a software naming BitMate, a peer to peer file sharing system aimed for low bandwidth networks. The MIT Technology Review selects the top innovators from around the world after in-depth evaluation process.
Judges, from the Stanford and Harvard universities who are leading experts in their fields such as MIT considered hundreds of high impact researchers and tycoons from all over the world, out of which top 35 are chosen for the award.
Dr. Umar Saif’s name was included in the list for his contribution for developing world by speeding up their download speeds. BitMate is like torrent software for low-bandwidth users. It lets a pool of users in the same area to share the common data to pool the bandwidth, which ultimately reduces download time, typically by half. This software was released in February this year; the software has already been downloaded more than 30,000 times by people in 173 countries. He also had developed an SMS based utility earlier, named as ‘SMSall’ for Pakistani audience that enabled users to interact with each other in form of groups. This solution was formed in response to October 2005 earthquake to make communication easier and smoother for those helping hands in remote regions.
Dr. Umar Saif has been recognized for his work done in the field of medicine, computer, communications, energy, electronics and neon technology fields. Development in under developing countries his work is appreciated at international level. He is working with the entrepreneur group of developers of Apple, Google, Tumbler and Facebook since last some decades.
