CFD Team Spotlight: Muhammad Zaman, CFD Director
The Newsletter Team set down for an interview with our Director, Muhammad Zaman, for an interview about his research, passions, hobbies, and special CFD projects. The transcript of our interview is below.
CFD: Where are you from?
I was born in Pakistan, in the capital city Islamabad, in 1977 and grew up there. That city still holds a very special place in my heart.
CFD: What do you study?
Broadly speaking, my research focuses on global health, meaning that I focus on health challenges faced by communities in low and middle-income countries. In the last few years, I have focused on access to healthcare, and improving health outcomes among forcibly displaced communities. In this regard, we are particularly interested in understanding the barriers to accessing healthcare among refugees, internally displaced persons, and stateless communities, and what role technological interventions can play in addressing these challenges. We are also studying disease dynamics among forcibly displaced and stateless communities, in camps and in urban informal settlements, and a number of our projects focus on drug-resistant infections.
CFD: What experiences most directly lead you to your role with the Center?
Over the last decade, I have tried to converge my research, teaching, and public writing on the issue of forced displacement. I have also been privileged to work with exceptional people on the ground who are displaced or work on issues facing the forcibly displaced. Along the way, I have also been extremely fortunate to work with colleagues and students who have taught me so much. It is through my interactions with these remarkable people, colleagues, and students, that got me to think in a more systematic way about the idea of a center. Teaching with Professor Carrie Preston on the issue of forced displacement has been an opportunity of a lifetime. Professor Preston and I have been thinking for some time to create a space where students, scholars, practitioners, and researchers from multiple disciplines can converge, think and learn from each other. We are really fortunate that the university has supported our idea and has made our dream a reality.
CFD: What drew you to this position?
I grew up in Pakistan in the early 1980s, and there were millions of Afghan refugees in the country. Islamabad, the city I grew up in, had quite a few as well. On the surface there was support, but underneath there were strong currents of racism and xenophobia, and a lot of it still persists in society. In many ways, it probably has gotten worse. I did not appreciate it at that time, but now I recognize that all of that experience had an effect on me. I now feel that it left a permanent imprint on my thinking and worldview.
In graduate school, I was involved in some organizations that focused on social justice and I also took classes in the school of public policy and would routinely go to seminars in the various departments in the divinity school as well as in social sciences and humanities. It was quite unusual for people in chemistry (my home department) to attend these lectures, but my Ph.D. advisor was not just brilliant and exceptionally well-read, he was also very kind and encouraging. As I progressed through my career, I developed this sense that I wanted to work on the issues that vulnerable communities in countries like mine (Pakistan) faced. This, along with the opportunity to learn from incredible mentors and colleagues in so many disciplines helped me in shaping my views and my approach to research. Over time, I realized that I wanted to dedicate my research, public engagement, writing, and teaching to an issue that was both important to me, and woefully under-studied from the lens of science and engineering.
CFD: What continues to draw you to the position?
I think I have the best job on the planet. I am surrounded by incredibly smart, generous, and kind people who all care so much about others. To serve in this role, alongside such great people, is a true blessing and privilege.
CFD: How has your role evolved over your time here?
I now appreciate, more than ever before, the need and necessity of interdisciplinary approaches to tackle complex global challenges. I have a deep appreciation for humanities and social sciences, and I strongly believe that solutions in technology or questions in science benefit so much from engagement with humanists, artists, and social scientists. I have also recognized that I know very little (about anything) and how much I need to learn from my senior colleagues, my peers, and my students.
I benefit every day from an incredible team that we have at our center and our partners. I think the thing that I have now, and I did not have six or seven months ago, is immense gratitude for everything that our team does. They are just phenomenal and I am so indebted to them for everything. The staff who work with us are simply incredible and none of what I do as a researcher, and what we do as a center, would be possible without their dedication, effort, kindness and generosity of spirit.
CFD: What inspires you about this work?
I would say two things. First, the opportunity to work with incredible people from all around the world. It is a privilege to learn from all of them. Second, the feeling that one day my work may make a difference in someone’s life. The first happens every day, the second I really hope will happen one day.
CFD: Tell us about some of your passions and hobbies outside of academia. What makes you you?
I love to read, and I try to read broadly. I am always surrounded by books. My wife believes (and she is right!) that when we moved houses, our books outweighed all the furniture combined. And that was nearly nine years ago. It is much worse now. Usually there is a mini-tower of books on my bedside table. I often read several books at a time (not sure if that is good or bad!). Right now, I am reading a book on central asia (Lost Enlightenment by S. Frederick Starr), a novel by Mozambican writer Mia Cuoto (Woman of the Ashes), a perspective by an Iraqi journalist on the US led war in Iraq and how it shaped his own city (A Stranger in Your Own City: Travels in the Middle East’s Long War by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad), Song of the Cell by Siddhartha Mukherjee, and an autobiography of an Urdu literary critic (a book by Fateh Muhammad Malik). In addition, I would pick up a book of Urdu poetry (usually Faiz or Iqbal) very regularly – typically once a week or more. I also love to write for a broad audience. I have written a weekly column for an English newspaper in Pakistan every week for the last 12 years. I also write in Urdu and would have an essay or an op-ed in Urdu newspapers once every couple of months.
CFD: Where do you see yourself in five years?
I see myself closely tied to the center. I want to be part of a team that makes the center a truly exceptional place for research, scholarship, learning and public engagement. I want our center to be the place that generates new knowledge by bringing together disciplines, from sciences, engineering, arts, humanities and social sciences, in ways that have not been done before. I want our center to be the place where scholars from all over the world can come and spend time, and in doing so help us become a better place. I want this to be a place of not just rigorous and exceptional scholarship, but a place that is inclusive, kind, respectful and is able to make a profound positive impact on how we think about forced displacement, how we understand the challenges faced by communities that are forced to leave their homes, and how we come up with thoughtful, rigorous, ethically grounded and sustainable solutions.
CFD: Where do you see yourself much farther from now – thirty, forty, fifty years down the road? What do you want to look back on?
From a center’s perspective, I would like this center to be a catalyst for other similar efforts, all across the world, where interdisciplinary scholarship is the norm, not the exception. I hope that our center will serve as a seed for the creation and growth of new centers, institutes and places of scholarship and interdisciplinary research focused on addressing urgent questions of global significance through discovery, knowledge creation, ethical reasoning, solution development and sustainable policy. I hope that over the next several decades, ours and these other centers, will produce exceptional researchers, scholars, policy makers, and leaders who will leave a permanent positive impact on the world.
From a personal perspective, I would love to look back at a career that focused on excellent research, meaningful writing and teaching, and engagement with others that was rooted in kindness, respect and understanding.
CFD: What is your current passion project with the Center you would like to highlight? Why does this project resonate with you?
I love all of our projects. I will give an example of one that I am particularly excited about. It is a project that is focusing on the health of those who are in the process of migrating, and not just those who reach a destination and settle. In general, our data and information often comes from people who either settle or are in a place for an extended period of time even if they are not settled, but we know so little about the health challenges of those who are in the process of migrating. We are developing new and multidisciplinary approaches to study this question. Using wastewater sampling, interviews from the local community and public health professionals, historical analysis and computational modeling, we are trying to understand the health challenges of those who are in process of migrating. Through this research, not only do we plan to get a better understanding of the health of migrants, but we also hope to help the local NGOs and local refugee support groups with better information. This is something we are doing in the Balkans with our partners in Bosnia and hope to expand to other places as well.
CFD: Do you have any tips and/or advice for people starting out in your field?
I tell my junior colleagues to read broadly and try to bring new methods and tools (from disciplines other than their own) to take a fresh look at the problems they are working on. Be prepared to experiment, innovate and take some risks with the methods. I also tell them to find mentors – both within and outside their field, and seek their advice. Finally and most importantly, regardless of their discipline, I tell them to write something (frequently if they can) for a general audience without watering it down. If we are unable to share our thoughts without the crutches of a complex jargon, we probably do not understand what we are studying and working on.
CFD: Can you tell us a fun fact about yourself/can you tell us about something you’re proud of?
Well three things come to mind. First, I like to cook. I am not sure if I am very good at it, but I like to experiment with new ideas and new methods. Perhaps it is the chemist in me, and like a typical chemistry student, not all of my experiments turn out well.
Second, I am excited about the fact that I have maintained strong ties with my own language. I regularly write in Urdu. I have been extremely fortunate to have traveled to so many remarkable places and I have shared my experiences in travel essays. My first book on travel essays in Urdu came out two years ago. Another one is coming out next month. Here again, I have experimented with the travel writing genre. In the upcoming book, instead of the whole journey, I have focused on a single point in time (e.g. a boat ride in Greenland, an hour in front of the African Renaissance Monument in Dakar where I was the only visitor that day, an afternoon in Lenin’s study in St Petersburg, or a discussion with the owner of a coffee shop in the middle of Tahrir Square in Cairo who kept his shop open during the Egyptian revolution of 2011).
Third – I am incredibly proud of my students. Every now and then I would run into someone who would tell me about all the incredible things they are doing for others and it makes me immensely grateful for having the best job in the world.