Maria Gulzar

Hi, I’m Maria Gulzar, 23 and raised up in Islambad, the beautiful capital of Pakistan. I am a recent graduate in Computer Engineering from GIK Institute and currently working as a Data Analyst. Drawing useful insights thorugh analytical tools from huge amounts of data, creating data pipelines and streamlining day to day processes is what I do on most of the days.
My story is probably the same as the average millennial in Pakistan. My father, uneducated and tired from a life where financial stability was a huge question mark and wanting to do more for himself, left for the city life in search for work. He worked as a mechanical fitter in his twenties and then met a woman, who was neither able to speak nor hear (hearing impaired), yet worked full-time, was dangerously independent and decided to marry her. My older brother and I were born shortly after, and my father increasingly tense about the education his son was receiving in a public school in Karachi, decided to sell off everything and come to Islamabad.
Even though it was a start from very humble beginnings, our house has always emphasized on learning, growth, progression and resilience. I was around 5 years old when I picked up a short story on Marie Curie, the lady who defied against all odds and accomplished goundbreaking work in Physics and Chemistry. I, at a tender age and not even knowing half the words in the book, started chanting songs of becoming a scientist, told everyone to start calling me ‘Madame Marie’ and started beleiving I too was made for Science. Practicising mathematical problems for hours on end, teaching chemistry and physics to my classmates in school and scoring distinctions in my O’levels (world & regional) paved my way into believing science was my forte. In 2015, I was offered this incredible opprtunity to attend a ‘Building Bridges Robotics Program’ at the University of Rhode Island (completely sponsored). My father, not getting pressurised from the extended family to not send a ‘girl’ alone abroad, made arrangements and I had a terrific one month of my life in USA where I got an introduction into the various kinds of engineering degrees and allowed me to decide what I wanted to do for my undergraduate- Computer Science. The field where nothing was wrong, where one thing could be done a million ways, where you could create anything you wanted, solve any real-world problems through some lines of code fascinated me. I started applying to the best engineering schools in Pakistan and landed in one- GIKI. Although there were obstacles encountered and sometimes circumstances would prove to be demotivating, I would look back at how far my family has come, how far they’ve helped me come and how this was still nothing compared to what I wanted to do ahead. I authored two research papers on IoT Security (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8711834) and Climate Smart Agriculture (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9080695) mentored by my professor and also got selected by Higher Education Commission Paksitan to represent Pakistan in Huawei Seeds for the Future Program’ in 2019. I not only wanted to work in STEM, but had this urge to do something for the people living in the rural areas surrounding our university as well. I worked towards the healthcare, education, climate preservation and emergecy relief through Career Counselling Programs for public school students, Sponsor A Child Right to Education Program for the financially handicapped families and medical camps for people who could not afford medical check ups. Naturally taking part in lots of extra-curriculars, I became the President of GIK’s welfare society, the Editor-in-Chief of the Writing team, Regional Squash Champion and at the end of it all, received the highest honour of the institute (Quaid-e-Azam Gold Medal) for all the blood and sweat that had gone into these four years.
Now finally that I am back home, I have opted for a full-time job in Data Science & Analytics, the field I want to achieve a Master’s and a PhD in soon. In my spare time, I learn Data Science in R and document the project and upload them on my blog on Medium, trying my best to simplify the buzzwords and techniques for beginners. (https://medium.com/@maria.gulzar186). Im not great at motivational speeches, but I do have a message for women in science. I don’t know what your story is and why are you interested in STEM, but there will be times when it’ll be very hard for you to understand things and you will doubt the choices you’ve made. At that point in time, sit back, focus on each individual step of the problem and practice. That is the only thing that will make you fall in love with your choice in STEM all over again