Meet Our Bloggers: Aatif Baskanderi

Every week one of our bloggers will introduce themselves to the world and talk about how much fun it is working in Science Policy. Today Aatif Baskanderi says hello from Calgary.

Aatif Baskanderi – Calgary

Hi!

My name is Aatif and, as per my Twitter account (@aatifb), I am an Islamo-Newfie-Pakistani-Engineer + Science nerd passionate about the potential of society.

I have always been in love with science, growing up a trekkie from the age of 6 (TNG FTW!). Watching all these human & alien races develop new technologies in different ways showed me that scientific innovation is open to anyone with curiosity and ambition to boldly go where no man/woman has gone before. I moved into the engineering lab at Memorial University of Newfoundland, aiming to be like a fellow engineer, Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge. I finished my Bachelors of Electrical Engineering with experience in municipal planning, oil & gas, forestry and mining, and then went on to be a Hardware Systems Designer at BlackBerry. At the same time in Ottawa, I worked a lot with Engineers Without Borders Canada in public outreach, member education, and spending a year as the chapter co-president.

I continually explore how to connect my Islamic values into everyday life and certainly the connection of my love for both engineering and social well-being. I left for the London School of Economics and Political Science to complete my M.Sc. Social Policy and Development with an interest to identify how science and engineering can serve broader social development objectives. After my MSc, I worked in Sierra Leone for a year on interfaith community education approaches to malaria prevention, then back to Canada looking at green ICT and digital memory institution opportunities with the Council of Canadian Academies. I am currently in my last term of my second masters, a Master of Technology Management, to develop my knowledge on the business and management of innovation.

I never saw science and engineering as a unique silo, but constantly seeing value in how it integrates with society through policy and collaboration. Along with that, from a well-being point of view, I see science and engineering playing a vital role in developing social, natural, economic, infrastructural, and human rights that enable us to meet our full potential. My lifelong hero is my father, who fled India during partition, grew up in a poor farming village in Pakistan, was enrolled in school by a local imam (religious leader), and completed grade school to receive a scholarship for his chemical engineering degree in Japan (joke is on him – he never realized coursework would be delivered in Japanese until he got there). It has always been ingrained in me that science and engineering education provides significant opportunities. I am a relentless pragmatic optimist and science and engineering is my tool and collaborative playground to deliver opportunities through policy and joint projects to benefit society.