Eden Haseeb

My name is Eden Haseeb and I grew up in Karachi, Pakistan in a family of four members. I did A levels in Sciences and Economics with straight A*s and As from The Lyceum School, after which I pursued Biomedical Engineering from NED University of Engineering & Technology which I completed with 3.875 CGPA and an overall second position in the class. Currently, I am doing MSc in Biotechnology & Bioengineering from the University of Kent in England, United Kingdom.

I became interested in Biomedical Engineering when I was selecting an undergraduate course, as I always enjoyed Mathematics but was not interested in studying traditional engineering courses. Then I discovered about biomedical engineering and got very fascinated with it as it is all about integrating technology in healthcare. I thoroughly enjoyed my undergraduate studies, except for the course in Robotics which still I feel was tormenting for me.

I have worked on many projects including the development of a nanohybrid dental composite from rice husk as an efficient and effective treatment for the dental cavities. I with my group members won third prize at the DUHS-DICE Health Innovation competition 2018, also we won the gold medal for our paper from IEEE in 2019. Currently, I am working on my MSc project in which I am researching about optimizing the production of rAAV vectors for gene therapy.

I aim to have a successful career as a Clinical Trial Manager; however, one needs to have an extensive amount of experience in the field to become that. Consequently, I will be staring my career with entry-level jobs such as Research Assistant or Clinical Trial Assistant to gain valuable experience and to sharpen my skills to achieve my dream job.

There were certain obstacles which I experienced as a woman in STEM as well. In 2016, Ingenious competition was arranged by ASHRAE society where I and my group partner won the runner up prize while the other male group won the first prize. I feel that our design deserved to be won as the projectile which we designed covered more distance than the group who won. This can also be because that the group who won had contacts with the committee members and not because they were “males”, however, I felt very disappointed and did not participate in any competition held in my university arranged by that society.

Unfortunately, during my undergraduate I heard various stories by different departments where girls were considered a misfit. In 2014-2015 batch of mechanical engineering, there were only 4 girls in a class of approximately 200 students. Similar was the case with automotive engineering where female students were mocked as many thought that they will not pursue the field as they will get “married” one day. In our society, unfortunately, female engineers are not much appreciated as many believe that they are going to give up their career for their family. This is outrageous as pursuing a career or not is someone’s own choice and mocking them or making them feel that they do not belong there is wrong on so many different levels.

Indeed, it is a challenge for many girls to pursue engineering because of such issues but there are multiple examples of female engineers who are successful in their careers. Ramla Qureshi did her BE in Civil Engineering from NUST in 2012 and since then she has been working on several successful projects. She is the founder of Women Engineers Pakistan through which she encourages girls to pursue engineering and to participate in a field that has such a broader gender gap. Zartaj Waseem is another role model for us who is a software engineer and is currently leading Destination Imagination, which a US-based STEAM Program. She is also the focal person of National Organizer in Pakistan for World Robot Olympiad (WRO) on behalf of STEM360 and is the first Pakistani STEAM Education Professional to be designated as Global STEM Corps Advisor for FIRST Global and also as an International Award Judge. Pakistani women are no more behind than men in STEM and I hope that in future years we will surely have more participation from women in this field.
My only advice to women in STEM is to keep trying and never give up any opportunity as one way or another it will pay off. Also, one needs to be confident enough in themselves so that the very “opinions” of people does not matter to them.