In a remarkable achievement, LUMS Associate Professor Dr. Zubair Khalid has become the first Pakistani to win the prestigious Gordon Bell Prize for Climate Modelling. The accolade recognizes groundbreaking contributions in high-performance computing applications to address complex global challenges, including climate change.
Dr. Khalid was part of a 12-member multi-institutional team that developed an advanced predictive model for climate analysis. The team’s project, titled “Boosting Earth System Model Outputs and Saving PetaBytes in Their Storage Using Exascale Climate Emulators,” was presented at the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) conference held in Atlanta this November.
“The university has been instrumental in supporting my contributions to this endeavor by fostering an environment that encourages interdisciplinary research and collaboration,” Dr. Khalid said in a statement released by the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS).
Dr. Khalid also credited the Center for Urban Informatics, Technology, and Policy at LUMS for facilitating his engagement with global research networks, which enabled him to contribute to this high-impact international project.
Dr. Walther Schwarzacher, Dean of the Syed Babar Ali School of Science and Engineering at LUMS, congratulated Dr. Khalid, highlighting his accomplishment as a testament to the exceptional contributions made by the faculty to address critical scientific challenges.
“This remarkable achievement highlights the outstanding contributions that the School’s faculty are making to address some of the greatest scientific challenges facing our society,” Dr. Schwarzacher said.
The Gordon Bell Prize, established in 1987 and accompanied by a $10,000 cash award, is presented annually by the ACM in conjunction with the Supercomputing Conference (SC Conference series). The award celebrates innovative applications of supercomputing in fields like science, engineering, and societal problem-solving.
Dr. Khalid’s historic win underscores Pakistan’s growing presence in cutting-edge scientific research and innovation on the global stage.
