Sahar Abdullah: Role Model for Women's IT Education

Most young women growing up in Yemen have few opportunities for higher education and professional jobs. But Sahar Abdullah's parents believe that higher education plays an integral role in personal development, so they strongly encouraged Sahar and her sister to continue education after high school.

Because Sahar was one of the top secondary school students in Yemen, she received a scholarship to study for her bachelor's degree in Egypt. Her love for programming and problem solving led Sahar to choose computer science as her major. At Cairo University she successfully completed her bachelor's degree in Computer Science and master's degree in Information Systems, and completed a Cisco diploma at American University.

After learning about our unique MS in Computer Science in a LinkedIn message from MUM, Sahar kept thinking that one master's degree was enough--but the idea for a second master's emphasizing OOP software development kept popping into her head. So she decided to research Maharishi University of Management and our MS in Computer Science for Computer Professionals program, and joined our Facebook group. When Sahar realized that many Arab students had happily and successfully enrolled in this program, she decided to apply, and was accepted for the October 2014 entry.

Happy at MUM

When she first arrived at Maharishi University of Management last year, Sahar's initial impression of the University was that everyone here was happy. She told her mother, "All the people here are smiling and saying hi!"

After a year on campus, Sahar reflects on the special nature of the MUM/Fairfield, Iowa community: "I really love this peaceful environment that I am in--an environment full of love, happiness and joy obtained from the incredible benefits of practicing the Transcendental Meditation technique. Just living in this community with international software professionals all doing TM together is an honor for me in itself."

Even though she is far from her parents and sister, and misses them very much, Sahar's family is relieved to know she is in a very safe and completely supportive environment at MUM.

Harmony in Diversity

"As a Muslim lady living in Fairfield, I feel that people around me are respecting me and others," says Sahar. "They treat me as one of them, despite the fact that I wear my scarf. I have never felt mistreated. Friends greet us on Eid (a Muslim holiday), and Eid prayers trips are arranged for us."

Top Academics

Sahar has also been pleased with the academics in the Computer Professionals program: "The program's high standards create a powerful motivation. I look to this program like a tree: You plant the seed, water it, and take care of it. As the knowledge grows within, you gain fruits forever. Every aspect of the academic program was the best either in moments of challenge, or moments of success. The courses were very challenging, but now that I am finished, I am ready for my curricular practical training internship in the IT industry."

Advice for Other Female Software Developers

"Nowadays, the biggest challenge for a female is to be employed and feel useful for society and herself. I would like to tell all female software developers who feel they are creative, full of ideas, and dreams, but have not found the appropriate ways to express their talents--at MUM you will get the support and knowledge to realize the best in your skills and competencies."

A Bright Future

In January, Sahar will begin her IT career as a Software Engineer at Intel in Oregon where she will be part of a product development engineer team. Her job will be transforming designs into competitive products, and testing development for microprocessors, system-on-chips and chip sets. We wish her great happiness and success, as we stay in touch with another special member of our world family.

#MUMComPro #MaharishiU #TranscendentalMeditation
http://www.icontact-archive.com/-muTXAz3b2H7v5t9_KiDZ6lrqJE5Dk6o

MUM Student Software Competition to Promote Maharishi AyurVeda

Computer science students will have the opportunity to win significant cash prizes by participating in a competition over winter break that will entail creating new tools such as smartphone apps for promoting Maharishi AyurVeda worldwide.

Called DevFest, the competition will be open to students in the MUM Computer Professionals Program and others. It will be a carefully structured seven-day on-campus event, and the activities will range from generating ideas and teaming, to developing the solutions and evaluating outcomes.

"We are very excited about bringing this new kind of a learning technique to MUM," said Professor Anil Maheshwari, the lead organizer. "The DevFest will also help develop new tools and channels to make Maharishi AyurVeda more accessible to the world."

All Computer Professionals students who choose to stay on campus during the Christmas break will be invited to participate, with about 150–200 expected to be involved.

Teams of 5–6 students will develop ideas and present them, and then will design and develop solutions based on their ideas. Then at the end, they will present their projects for evaluation.

The top three winners will receive awards. The entries will be judged on business readiness of the project, innovation of design, and technical readiness of the solution.  #MaharishiU #AyurVeda #MUMComPro

108 New Students from 19 Countries Enrolled in our MS in Computer Science in May

These photos of our 108 new Computer Professionals students were taken with faculty at the end of their first course. The May entry includes wonderful students from 19 nations: Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Colombia, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, India, Iran, Jordan, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Ukraine, Vietnam, Uzbekistan, and Venezuela. See more photos.

New Faculty Applying IT to Enhance Lives of the Information Poor in Developing Nations

We are pleased to have Dr. Emdad Khan join our Computer Science faculty at Maharishi University of Management.

Throughout his professional career, Dr. Khan has focused on education, innovation and entrepreneurship to improve the global economic, social, cultural and educational quality of life for all people on our planet.

His expertise extends from Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Data Science, to Internet, Intelligent Internet, Human Computer Interaction, Machine Learning, Algorithms, Software Engineering, Semiconductors and VLSI.

His work in the areas of Big Data, Natural Language Understanding and Intelligent Agent Based Web led to the start up of the company, InternetSpeech, whose products allow people to unleash the power of the Internet simply with a standard telephone and the sound of their voice. He founded the company in 1998 with the vision to develop innovative technology for accessing information on the Internet anytime, anywhere, using just an ordinary telephone and the human voice. See http://www.internetspeech.com/ for more information.

Professor Khan plans to teach the following courses in our Computer Science Department: Algorithms, Web Application Architecture, Advanced Software Development, System Analysis and Design, Big Data, Data Mining, OOP, Software Engineering, Enterprise Architecture, Modern Programming Practices. In the future he hopes to teach Natural Language Processing, Bioinformatics and other multi-disciplinary courses.

See http://www.icontact-archive.com/-muTXAz3b2H7v5t9_KiDZ4AH5y_pf1vx?w=3.

Historic Graduation Talk by Former Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama

On Saturday, May 23rd, a record 391 Maharishi University of Management graduates where honored to experience an amazing graduation talk by Dr. Yukio Hatoyama, the former Prime Minister of Japan.
  

Dr. Hatoyama is a member of a distinguished Japanese family, which has been compared with the Kennedy family in the US. His family has a long history of government service. His great-grandfather was the speaker of the House of Representatives in Japan’s legislature in the late 19th century. His grandfather was Prime Minister of Japan in the 1950's and helped secure membership in the United Nations for Japan. His father was Japan’s foreign minister. His younger brother served as Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications.

His family also has a long history in higher education. His great-grandfather, after stepping down from government service, became President of Waseda University, and his great grandmother co-founded Kyoritsu Women’s University. At the graduation, Dr. Hatoyama received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from MUM.

Dr. Hatoyama holds an undergraduate degree in engineering from the University of Tokyo and a PhD in industrial engineering from Stanford. He was a professor of engineering at Tokyo Institute of Technology and Senshu University.

His political career began in 1986, when he was elected to the House of Representatives. He was elected Prime Minister in 2009, and despite his relatively short time in office, he has a long list of achievements, including greater spending on education and student scholarships and free support services for people with disabilities. Under his leadership, Japanese relations with China became more cordial.

Please enjoy photos of the event here.

Largest MUM Computer Professionals MS Program entry ever!

One week ago, we registered and welcomed 128 new students from 23 countries to our MS in Computer Science for Computer Professionals program. Our next entry is May 22, 2015.

Students come from:

Afghanistan	1
Algeria	1
Bangladesh	6
Bosnia and Herzegovina	1
Cambodia	3
Cameroon	1
China	4
Egypt	6
Eritrea	9
Ethiopia	18
India	8
Indonesia	2
Iran, Islamic Republic of	1
Jordan	2
Mauritania	1
Mongolia	3
Nepal	47
Pakistan	3
Sri Lanka	2
Thailand	1
Tunisia	1
United States	1
Uzbekistan	1
Viet Nam	5

New Book: Business Intelligence and Data Mining

New Book: Business Intelligence and Data Mining
by Dr. Anil K. Maheshwari, Professor of Management Information
Systems, and Director of the Center for Data Analytics at
Maharishi University of Management

Business Intelligence and Data Mining is a conversational and
informative book in the exploding area of Business Analytics.
Using this book, one can easily gain the intuition about
the area, along with a solid tool set of major data mining
techniques and platforms. This book can thus be gainfully
used as a textbook for a college course. It is also short and
accessible enough for a busy executive to become a quasi-expert
in this area in a couple of hours. Every chapter begins
with a case-let from the real world, and ends with a case
study that runs across the chapters.

Dr. Anil K. Maheshwari is a Professor of Management Information
Systems, and Director of the Center for Data Analytics at
Maharishi University of Management. He teaches courses
in data analytics, and helps scientific and commercial organizations
with extracting deep insights from data. He has
worked in a variety of leadership roles at IBM in Austin TX,
and also at start-up companies. Dr. Maheshwari has taught at the University
of Cincinnati, City University of New York, and others.
He earned an electrical engineering degree from Indian Institute
of Technology in Delhi, an MBA from Indian Institute of
Management in Ahmedabad, and a PhD from Case Western
Reserve University. He is a practitioner of the Transcendental Meditation™ technique,
and blogs at anilmah.com.