How FAST-NUCES built a university on 10 crore rupees

From a hardware store in Daska to a PhD in Wales

The episode opens with Muzamil introducing Dr. Aftab Maroof as someone he has known for the better part of twenty years — a professor to his brothers, now the Rector overseeing five FAST-NUCES campuses. The conversation begins not with the university but with the man, and the early life Dr. Maroof describes is a long way from academia.

He was born in a small village near Daska in District Sialkot, into a business family that had migrated from Jammu at Partition. His father and uncles ran a hardware and building-materials store in Daska — cement, ICI soda ash, diesel engine parts. Dr. Maroof grew up inside that shop, and he credits it with giving him an early, hands-on understanding of technical things. He did his matric in Daska, his FSC in Gujranwala (a daily commute he remembers as exhausting), and his BSc in statistics and mathematics at Islamia College Sialkot, where he finished third in his class.

After graduating he went into the family rice-husking business, bolting together a mill himself. Within a year, Bhutto’s government nationalised all flour mills and rice-husking mills. The family received bonds encashable after twenty-five years — effectively worthless in the short term. When Zia ul-Haq reversed the nationalisations, the mill came back, but Dr. Maroof had already decided he wanted something else. He told his grandfather he was going to university. He went to Punjab University, could not get into the MBA programme, and completed an MSc in statistics in 1979. He returned to the family business for a few years, then opened his own building-materials store, which did well. But he wanted to teach.

He began applying for academic jobs and found, to his own surprise, that he was selected everywhere he interviewed. He later understood why: years in business had given him a maturity and composure that fresh graduates lacked. His first posting was as a lecturer in statistics at a college in Islamabad, then in 1984 he joined Bahauddin Zakariya University Multan. There, a government computer-training programme converted him — almost by accident — from a statistician into a computer scientist. “We statisticians became computer scientists,” he says. He spent four years at BZU, started its computer science department in 1989, and in September 1990, on his thirtieth birthday, landed in the UK on a government scholarship to do an MS leading to a PhD at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

He stayed until 1996. His PhD research was in sensor integration for robotic assembly — building a software framework that fused signals from multiple sensors to guide a robotic arm assembling components inside a three-dimensional workspace. The scholarship was tight: half the stipend went on rent, and he supplemented it with tutoring and departmental work. His family joined him after six months. All four children arrived and promptly caught chicken pox from their host family’s son. He finished his viva in March 1996, made minor corrections, submitted in April, took the family to London Zoo, flew through Cairo, performed Hajj, and was back in Pakistan within a month.

How FAST was actually founded — and what the Aga Khan’s money really bought

Dr. Maroof’s account of FAST’s origins is the most detailed available in any public forum. Muzamil asks him to explain the history, and what emerges is a story of elderly patriots, a single benefactor, and an endowment that has never been replenished.

The Foundation for Advancement of Science and Technology was established in the early 1980s by a group of senior Pakistanis who, watching the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, asked themselves what they could do for their country. Their answer was science and technology education. The founding board was structured carefully: fifteen governors, including two judges and two vice chancellors, all non-beneficiary and unpaid. The guiding motto, as Dr. Maroof describes it, was to produce excellent Muslim scientists, to hunt for the best talent regardless of financial background, and to prioritise quality over quantity.

The first hire was Dr. Ayub Alvi, a fresh PhD in computer engineering from UET Lahore, recruited after a chance encounter in Manchester. He came back and set up an electronics lab on behalf of FAST — which at that point owned no building and no land. A small plot in Lahore had been donated by a businessman named Seth Nawaza Shilli, who withdrew a legal dispute with the government in exchange for the land being allotted to FAST. That plot, roughly a hundred kanals, became the Lahore campus.

For several years the foundation ran on research projects and Aga Khan’s personal support. Then, around 1986 and 1987, Aga Khan made two injections of capital totalling ten crore rupees. The money went into an endowment. “From that endowment, the returns funded everything,” Dr. Maroof explains. “After that, nobody gave two paisa more.” Five campuses, fifteen hundred employees, twelve to fourteen thousand students — all of it traces back to that original sum and the discipline with which it was managed. “We treated it like zakat money, like charity money. We protected every rupee.”

The first BCS programme was announced in 1985 with thirty-five seats. Three thousand five hundred people applied. Computer science education at the undergraduate level simply did not exist in Pakistan at the time. The only comparable programmes were a sixteen-year MSc at Karachi University and something at UET Lahore. FAST’s three-year BCS, affiliated with Karachi University, filled immediately. Students dropped first-year engineering degrees at NED to join. One of them, Hassan Rizvi, is now among Oracle’s top global executives.

Two factors drove the early reputation: the BCCI bank’s association with the foundation gave it credibility, and graduates were being recruited by Silicon Valley before they had even finished their degrees. “The child who graduated here — their credentials were sent, and before graduation the offer letter arrived from there.”

Building the Islamabad campus brick by brick

Dr. Maroof joined the Islamabad campus in January 1999, when it was operating out of two rented houses in G-6 in front of the covered market. There were fewer than two hundred students across all batches, three professors — Dr. Ayub Alvi, Dr. Maroof, and Dr. Waseem Ikram — and a handful of visiting faculty.

The university received its independent federal charter on 1 July 2000, separating from Punjab University affiliation. Dr. Maroof was appointed Director of the Islamabad campus on 1 January 2001 and held that position for exactly ten years, until 31 December 2010. In that decade he oversaw the construction of the current campus. “I built the Islamabad campus. I remember the measurements of every room, every inch of what I did and how I did it.” The land was acquired from CDA. The building went up between 2004 and 2005, and the campus moved there fully in 2005.

During those years the academic structure was also built from scratch. The three-year BCS became a four-year programme. MS Computer Science launched in 2001. Telecom Engineering followed in 2002–2003. Management Sciences in 2004. The PhD programme in 2004. The first international research paper was presented at a conference in Kazakhstan in 2005. By the time Dr. Maroof left the directorship in 2010, nine people had completed PhDs in computer science from the Islamabad campus alone.

In 2011 the board asked him to go to Chiniot-Faisalabad and build a new campus from nothing. He spent a year buying land directly from farmers — a legally complicated process — and the earth-breaking ceremony was held on 4 February 2012. That campus now sits on roughly thirty acres.

The governance structure that keeps politics out

Muzamil asks how the board of governors is chosen and how it has stayed clean. Dr. Maroof’s answer is precise. The board has fifteen members. Each serves a three-year term and is elected by the sitting members when a vacancy arises. The criteria are informal but consistent: people with standing in their fields, whose reputations protect the institution from external pressure.

“When people know who is sitting on our board of governors, they quietly go away. They don’t mess with us.”

Current president is Senator Wasim Sajjad, former Chairman of the Senate for twelve years. The board includes sitting and retired judges, former vice chancellors, and figures like Dr. Samar Mubarakmand. The financial oversight is rigorous: third-party auditors check every rupee, the board approves budgets, and directors have defined spending limits within those budgets. The board does not interfere in academic decisions. “The board does not interfere. They do financial monitoring. Academic matters are ours.”

The academic governance runs through an online Academic Council — created during COVID and retained because it proved useful — that meets every two weeks and includes all directors, heads of department, and deans across all campuses. “We debate it out among academicians.”

The internship problem and what Pakistan’s industry still doesn’t understand

Later in the discussion, Muzamil raises the gap between what FAST produces and what the broader market needs. Dr. Maroof identifies the core structural failure clearly: Pakistani industry does not invest in internships, and the reason is short-term thinking.

“A company with a hundred-desk operation — if you ask them to create twenty-five or thirty internship positions, their problem is: why should I seat twenty-five interns instead of twenty-five real workers? Because the intern needs space, a computer, internet, air conditioning. They burn all of that. And they’re not productive the way a professional is.”

He contrasts this with the UK, where smart students take an industrial year between their second and final year, returning with real-world skills that make their final year dramatically more productive. In the US, internships are routine. In Pakistan, the realisation that an internship is an investment in your own future workforce has not yet reached most of the industry.

The consequence is that graduates arrive at companies untrained, and companies then spend six months training them anyway — at greater cost and with no loyalty built. “If that student spends two months with you now and comes back trained in your systems, within a month of hiring they’ll be productive.”

Dr. Maroof is not passive about this. FAST has designed a web programming diploma — a certificate programme launching in the summer of 2022 across all campuses, fifty seats each, built in consultation with industry. The university is also allowing Pakistan Software Export Board grantees to use its campus facilities on weekends and evenings. Faculty members are permitted to run their own training programmes in off-hours and share revenue with the university. “We understand the need. If we don’t do it, who will?”

The scale of the demand is not abstract. Muzamil notes that a job fair held at FAST Islamabad one week before this recording saw fresh graduates hired at 150,000 rupees per month. “The IT industry is so desperate for good people,” Dr. Maroof confirms.

Research, defence projects, and the question of scale

Muzamil asks about research — whether it is independent or tied to external funders, as MIT’s work is tied to defence. Dr. Maroof is candid. Roughly half of FAST’s research funding over the past four to five years has come from defence-related projects. He mentions drone systems specifically: autonomous drones for monitoring CPEC corridors, UAV control systems, cyber security work. “We have expertise in drones. We developed it over time and we support them in that.”

Beyond defence, active research areas include bioinformatics — computer-aided diagnosis of illnesses — AI, and data science. FAST has a dedicated research floor with multiple labs. In the year ending June 2022, the university produced 380 research publications with impact factors. “People say you’re not number one. We say: compare our computer science department against theirs. We might win.”

New degree programmes reflect where the field is moving: BS in AI, data science, and cyber security were launched recently. A BS in fintech is launching in 2022, covering financial instruments, security, and emerging technologies including blockchain and cloud computing — both of which are already taught at BS and MS level. “Basic computing is the same. You just apply it to the financial sector.”

The outreach scholarship that transformed villages

One of the most striking passages in the conversation comes when Dr. Maroof describes a programme he ran in 2006 — a government-funded outreach scholarship targeting the poorest families in non-metropolitan Punjab, later extended across Pakistan.

The programme identified students from families where the father was a primary school teacher, a farm labourer, or a cobbler. Three thousand students were registered, 2,600 completed training, and the top two hundred were placed fifty each across FAST’s four campuses at the time. The full four-year cost — fees, hostel, everything — was covered. Computer-aided language learning labs were built at each campus specifically to address the students’ English deficiency.

“Those children — when they were here — could win gold medals, silver medals. They studied with such dedication. One child from an entire village had come. He was the pride of that village, the role model for every other child.”

The programme ran for several years before government funding was cut. Dr. Maroof describes it as one of the achievements he is most certain will count in his favour. “Those two hundred children were not two hundred children. They were two hundred families, two hundred villages.” He raised it again in a meeting the morning of this recording, asking that it be restarted.

Pakistan in 2050: hatred is the real threat

Muzamil closes by asking Dr. Maroof — who has lived through Bhutto’s nationalisations, Zia’s conservatism, the turbulent nineties, and everything since — how he sees Pakistan in 2050.

The answer is not optimistic about the present but not despairing about the future, provided one condition is met. “The problem in Pakistan is that we have created too much hatred and deviance. Society is so polarised. If this polarisation continues the way it is, survival will become very difficult.”

He draws a parallel to Nelson Mandela’s decision to forgive everything and start fresh. He argues that hatred — whether political or religious — has never solved a problem. “Hatred is not the solution to any problem. The solution is love, goodwill, caring for one another.” He tells his students to reject anyone who sells hatred, regardless of their political or religious affiliation.

He extends the critique to Pakistan’s powerful classes: business leaders, political figures, and influential circles who are focused on extracting from the country rather than building it. “We are builders, not destroyers. As long as the destroyers are dominant and respected in society, Pakistan cannot progress.”

He was reading the night before about the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 and the subsequent unification of Germany, trying to draw lessons. “We have stopped reading history. Our youth has no idea of history. They react emotionally, not practically.”

By the end of the conversation, the thread connecting Dr. Maroof’s personal story to his institutional work to his political diagnosis is clear: institutions survive on dedication, honesty, and the protection of every rupee entrusted to them. Pakistan’s crisis is not a resource crisis. It is a values crisis. “When you don’t do this work, you break apart. Then your name doesn’t remain. You become part of history.” He pauses. “May God protect us from that.”