American, Pakistani scientific studies address air quality

Islamabad: Forty alumni of US Government-funded exchange programmes who work in environmental sciences participated in a three-day master class on ‘Regional Approaches to Air Quality and Environment.’

The US Mission in Pakistan and the Pakistan-US Alumni Network (PUAN) collaborated with the National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) Professional Development Centre to host the class, which took place June 7-9, 2021.

Presenters included NASA researcher Dr. James H. Crawford, among other American experts. The class employed a range of teaching techniques and academic resources to examine air quality and atmospheric calculations, and the health impacts of smog, examining the Punjab Government’s efforts to tackle these issues as a case study.

Ray Castillo, Minister Counselor for Public Affairs at the US Embassy in Islamabad, joined the closing ceremony and lauded the critical role of PUAN in strengthening people-to-people ties between the United States and Pakistan. He urged the participants to apply the lessons from the class into direct actions for a cleaner and better future.

Dr. Rizwan Riaz, pro-rector of Research Innovation and Commercialisation at NUST, stressed the importance of clean air not only on our health, but also on our cognitive abilities.

He noted that NUST is the only university in Pakistan with an office of sustainability for its research and that is involved in air quality and monitoring studies that use optical sensors placed around Islamabad to see dispersion patterns, similar to how NASA tracks the atmosphere.