How I Started Research Without a Roadmap
Today, as I write this diary, I have published more than 30 research papers on different topics, and I have completed my Ph.D. in computer science. It didn't happen without a reason, and it must be interesting on how it started actually.
The software company CEO meets me at a lunch at office..
The story of my research work goes back to 2006, when I started working as an internee with Marriala Consultants, a provide software solution provides. They had office in Islamabad, whereas they were based in Lahore. The CEO of company visited the Islamabad office in a month, and was interested to know on the few new developers and internees. After knowing that my father worked for a scientific organization, he inquired whether he was a scientist. I was around 23-24 years old at that time, and being from a relatively backward area, I always admired the scientists. However, with this admiration, the process for becoming a scientist was blurry, and for my father, I didn't thought him to be one. I believe that there are two types are thought processes in everybody. In the first type, a person thinks intentionally on a path and keeps referencing things to that, keeps guiding his brain, and is more involved. The other type isn't intentional, its in our mind at the back, and some times it pops up, i.e. its activated for sometime, and goes on the back again. However, it also leads to un-intentional learning, or motivation, or whatever you call it, depending up the context. In my case, the event above led to the second type of thought process, i.e. I just ignored and went to my desk to open my C# editor.
Open source codes and my curiosity..
with the run of time, I passed out from International Islamic University as an MCS Graduate, while my journey at Marriala Consultants continued. I was a .Net developer, but with the passage of time, I had to work with some clients on PHP stuff as well, and that's where I came to know about open source software, i.e. the ones where you don't need a license to use one's code, modify it. PHP is an open source, and one of the widely used language in the world. Due to the nature of the open licensing, the usage of open source software has grown up day by day. During my software development tasks, I was browsing git hub, and I found some presentations on open source testing models, and I kept on browsing some links and websites. The second type of thought process activated that day, and I unintentionally read a paper on open source testing. It was very new, and had some good views. At that time, I didnt even know what the citations were, and how the paper ranking used to work.
An unintentional visit to my university teacher..
In the final semesters of my MCS, I had a chance of taking a course of distributed computing from one of my favorite teachers at that time, Mr. Zulqurnain. One day (it was probably 2007), I took some prints and went to IIU, for no reason, as I was driven by some unknown force. I ended up reaching to Sir Zulqurnain. He was busy in some work, and when I told him that "I want to do some research", he stopped doing everything and started a discussion. I am not sure where the topic 'Open Source Testing' stands today, but at that time people didn't work a lot on this topic. He told me the pros and cons of research (I don't remember exactly what he discussed at that time), but I recall that he had emphasized on giving research some proper time, and told me why I should read many many papers. When I came out of his room, I had a folder sent to my email account that had plenty of PDFs containing open source testing presentations (ppts), and papers. The 'open source testing' was quite interesting to work on, because there were no models/frameworks/guidelines for conducting testing of various versions of codes developed by scattered authors from the globe. I have not read a lot on this topic, and I leave the readers to explore whether its still relevant or not. The journey with Sir Zulqurnain didn't last long, mainly because, in office, we were supposed to give 8 hours, and after that the exhausted mind could not devote time to research thing. It was all about reading, whereas in the office assignments, we had to code software. Actually, the research and rapid software development were two conflicting processes. Why? Because in software development we use a process which comes up with immediate deliverables and results. The financial models behind rapid software development push the companies to complete deliverables, earn money, and jump to the next task on a very strict timeline. Additionally, the low-cost Asian markets for software development attract customers from the developed world a lot, and a competition is observed when taking online jobs, and earning some handsome amounts. On the other hand, research is a very slow process, and it doesn't result in anything. You just read, read and read at the start of journey. Gradually, the allocated time (i.e. 3 hours a day), reduced to 2 hours, 1 hour, and then 0 hours. I also tried devoting time early morning with fresh mind, but the software coding always attracted me, for the reasons described above. I might discuss this in another diary later, that at some stage, I started freelancing as well, and built up my freelancer.com profile in not more than a few months with good earnings. It didn't benefit the research process at all, and after few meetings, I stopped going to IIU. Sir Zulqarnain however kept on communicating with me, and we hired few of his students from BS/MCS in our company as internee and then as developers. I didn't rethink about research for like 5+ years after that.
Dr. Asad Abdullah' CD lectures on data warehousing..
Another spark was seen in 2012-13, and there were strong indirect affectations to that spark as well. Although, I didn't proceed with Sir Zulqarnain, but I kept on receiving the information on latest tools/techniques due to the nature of work that we used to do in the software company. One day, the CEO assigned a team of developers a task to prepare a small Decision Support System. The idea was to build a solution that could work on the web. In those days, if something was working on the web, was always charming. Today, we have good internet facilities, but the period which I am discussing, had scarce internet facility. You disconnect from the internet at office, and unless you reach home, there was no way to connect. It was a bit peaceful, but disconnection is not suitable for business. Many tools were initially designed for desktop, and had seldom link to the internet. In 2005-06, one of my mates from MCS completed a project titled SQL Server on the fly, that means the provision of SQL through a web interface. The decision support system was something new as well, and was based on data warehousing. I will discuss this in another diary. For now, you can consider that the project made an curious on data warehousing and in a few days, a colleague brought CDs of lectures of Dr. Asad Abdullah, who was running the famous Agriculture Warehouse project at FAST university. I used to spend time on these CDs as well, but didn't think about working in practical fashion. In 2010, I left this job, and joined Pakistan Science Foundation, Islamabad as Web Manager.
Prof. Soomro and the door to SZABIST..
The data warehousing continuously followed me at Pakistan Science Foundation as well. Right after I joined, a conference was held with the title "Data Mining", and we were deeply involved in organizing it. During the workshop, Prof. Soomro, the Chairman of the foundation, had a 2-minutes discussion with me, encouraging me to dive deep into my subject. Between 2010-2013, I was involved in building databases for research related entities. For example, scientists, articles, journals, projects, etc. Slowly and gradually, I was surrounded by digital research data and scientists from the foundation. In Sep. 2013, I went to SZABIST, carrying my thought processes. The team which interviewed me, consisted of 3 teachers from computer science including the Program Coordinator Mr. Nadeem Khokhar, Dr. Arshad, and Dr. Naeem Khan. The only question which I remember was, "Why you want to do MS?", and the answer was "I want to do research, I want to write some papers.". The team acknowledged me that I could do at least 2-3 papers in my MS, and I was very happy to join SZABIST. I didn't know what was following, and I discuss this in my next diary.
