Wajiha Ahmed

My name is Wajiha Ahmed and I belong to Chakwal district of Pakistan. Being raised in a military family, I grew up living in different cities experiencing the diversity of the culture and traditions. I was so much obsessed with army doctors since childhood whenever I used to visit military hospital and see many army women doctors wearing impressive uniform. Irrespective of knowing the struggle at the age of 9 or 10, I just had a dream to become an army doctor. However, unfortunately, I could not join any medical college.
During all those years of school and college life, no one actually guided me about other professions. Lack of guidance and grooming has led me to worrisome situation after being failed to get admission in medical college. I did not know what to do, until one day, my father brought prospectus from Islamia University Bahawalpur (IUB) and off all the departments; I decided to choose Biotechnology as I studied about it in my college biology book. Therefore, life led me to join IUB where I attained my bachelor’s degree (BS in Biotechnology). During BS, Subjects such as, Tissue culture, Immunology, and Molecular biology etc., plus the research project based on hematological analysis of Hepatitis C virus disease helped me to understand the basic concepts of these subjects and earn hands-on lab research experience. Four years of education and research training by good teachers helped me to understand about the field and research work. After that, I moved to Islamabad for master’s degree in biomedical sciences from National University of sciences and technology. My research project during master’s degree was related to the applications of plant based silver nanoparticles for the identification of carcinogens (cancer causing agents), which was published in SCI journal. The knowledge and exciting applications of biomedical field to resolve the scientific problems appealed me a lot. This was the first experience to do independent research project where I have to deal with many problems myself, although my supervisor supported me a lot too. Hence, the research challenges and struggle to compete those brought an enthusiasm in me to continue my research career and that led me to apply for PhD. After a hard time of applying at different universities, I got scholarship opportunity at Zhejiang University in China. In contrast to many other girls in Pakistan who prefer to remain confined with conventional subjects, I have chosen to do my PhD in diverse field of Biomaterials. Biomaterials is a transdisciplinary field, which integrates the knowledge of chemistry, physics, biology and medicine to restore or augment natural functions in body. My PhD project is based on use of biomedical polymers for immune modulation during tissue engineering, which is a combination of my interests and experience from the past. Although I could not join medial college but choosing, this field has also given me enough confidence to solve the problems logically. It made me think out of the comfort zone about the problems and their solutions. In addition, I am more open-minded and confident towards taking new challenges and competing them with positive attitude. However, this journey was not much easy because I had to face lack of resources, harassment at work place, suppressing environment and less acceptance of being a female researcher while I was working in Pakistan. As I moved to an international city for my PhD, those hurdles were less common but the process of settling in an international working environment was quite challenging and exciting as well. However, this learning phase made me much stronger, multidimensional and independent person not just in research field but also in other aspects of life. Living in a society, which is lot different from Pakistan, is a fantastic experience. I have managed to carry my personal and professional life together in a balance and that made me realize that a woman can be a multi-tasking person and is equally capable of doing her job as men are.
Now a days, organ transplant, prosthetics, diagnostic techniques and development of new drugs etc. are becoming the advanced research topics. Similarly, Tissue regeneration is a diverse field and is used to solve many biomedical problems which otherwise were not possible. It can help us to regenerate the damaged tissue or part of the body and helps to regain the function. Tissue regeneration using biomaterials is now a widespread approach but these biomaterials can cause strong immune response once they are inserted in the body for specific function and lead to treatment failure as immune system being very particular behaves unusually for foreign objects so studying immune responses was an exciting phenomenon to study. Therefore, my research project is related to study the Immune system behavior during tissue regeneration. Working as a researcher is always exciting as we get answers to unexplored questions and develop new strategies to solve problems but I think research will just not be enough for advancements. Rather, we must try to bring those products in use and commercialization will be a good approach to solve world’s
originating biomedical problems so I have a strong desire to work in industries where I can be a part of the process to bring the research products in market. Therefore, my future goals are to become a part of industrial sector and apply my research knowledge in product-based research.
The unachieved dream of becoming a doctor did not stop me progressing ahead in life. Rather, I have learnt a lot in life during all these phases that helped me to become a stronger member of the community.