LUMS Computer Science Associate Professor Dr Umar Saif is the first Pakistani to win the prestigious Google Faculty Research Award for his research work funded by the US State Department. The US$ 100,000 Google Faculty Research Award was awarded to Saif for a low-cost rural telephony system that he has been working on for the past three years along with colleagues at UC Berkeley. Saif is currently on leave from LUMS and is working as the chairman of the Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB)Pakistan Today.