Celebrating our Champions; Prof Zia Ul Haq, Dean Public Health KMU, awarded HEC Pakistan Best Young Research Scholar Award in Health Sciences Category
Dr Zia Ul Haq, the professor and Dean of Public Health, Khyber Medical University (KMU), once again made his mark as the proud recipient of “HEC Pakistan Best Young Scholar Award in Health Sciences" category. One award was reserved each for Engineering, Natural, Biological, Agriculture, Computer, Social, Management and Health Sciences categories in a nationwide competition. In all health-related departments within Pakistan’s medical or general universities/ institutions, Prof Zia Ul Haq of KMU Peshawar was awarded the best young research scholar award for his outstanding contribution to the field of Public Health and a cash prize of 150,000 rupees. The award is granted on the basis of the number and quality of research articles, citations, research projects, supervisions, conference presentations, and academic achievements during the last calendar year. The main objective of this award is to acknowledge the high performance of the Pakistani faculty and researchers and thus promote competitive research culture in higher education and R&D institutions. The slogan of the 7th HEC outstanding research award was “Celebrating our Champions”.
Dr Zia said that these awards are the best means of acknowledging and honoring the hard work and preventing the brain drain at a national level. Prof Zia belongs to the Syed Family of district Dir Upper and his father Syed Matiullah is a senior retired officer of Forest Development Corporation (FDC). He has dedicated this award to his late mother; Hidayat Bibi who died during the middle of his Ph.D. studies abroad.
Besides the latest feather in his cap, Prof Zia has also had the honor of receiving HEC’s Best University Teacher Award (2015) and Life Time Achievement Awards (2017). He is one of the pioneer faculty members of KMU who has served from Lecturer to the position of Dean. He has more than 13 years of teaching, administrative and field experience in health sciences. He earned his Ph.D. in the field of Public Health from the University of Glasgow under Government of Pakistan HEC Scholarship, MBBS from Khyber Medical College and MPH from Gandhara University. He is a principal investigator of several large ongoing studies in collaboration with national and international organizations. Besides the academic work, he played important role in implementing family medicine approach, developing first health policy and establishing regional public health reference lab at KP, Pakistan. He is a technical member on the majority of health committees as a public health specialist and currently working as the core member of Health Policy Advisory Committee to the Minister of Health KP and task force on Health & Well-being.
KMU Pro-Chancellor Dr. Hisham Khan (Minister for Health), Vice-Chancellor Prof Arshad Javaid, Health Secretary Dr Syed Farooq Jamil, Registrar Prof Saleem Gandapur and public health colleagues across the globe have greeted Prof Dr Zia Ul Haq on these ongoing achievements.
