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IEEE Celebrates Technology’s Brightest Minds at Annual Event

New York City was the backdrop of this year’s IEEE Honors Ceremony, held on 24 April. The event celebrates engineering pioneers who have developed technologies that have changed how people connect and learn about the world. This year’s celebrants included the engineers behind innovations such as text-to-donate technology, AI-powered diagnostic tools, and the graphics processing unit, among many others. Prior to the Honors Ceremony, IEEE hosted a forum on 23 April for a select group of early-career achievers to exchange ideas and experiences with laureates and awardees, speakers, and IEEE leaders. Attendees from around the world, working in a variety of technical areas, shared their journeys and explored the intersections of technologies, disciplines, and missions. The event culminated in Friday evening’s black tie Honors Ceremony, where IEEE celebrated medal laureates, including Jensen Huang, who received IEEE’s highest recognition, the IEEE Medal of Honor. Huang is a cofounder of Nvidia and its chief executive. “IEEE has always been a home to those who see the future before others see it,” Mary Ellen Randall, IEEE president and CEO, said in her welcome speech. Video highlights and photos from the event are available on the IEEE Awards website. Exploring mission-driven tech and AI in art Friday morning began with a conversation between Randall and Marian Croak, the recipient of this year’s IEEE Founders Medal. Croak was honored for “leadership in communication networks, including acceleration of digital equity, responsible artificial intelligence, and the promotion of diversity and inclusion.” Croak, who serves as vice president of engineering at Google, headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., pioneered Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technologies. When a person speaks into a telephone, VoIP converts their voice into digital signals that are transmitted over the Internet rather than traditional phone lines. Her work enabled audio and video conferencing. She also developed text-to-donate technology to raise money for those affected by Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005. The technology enables customers to donate money to a charity via their mobile service provider, which then bills them. “Empathy has always been a driving force in the engineering that I’ve done,” she said. She shared advice on how to stay creative: “Get out of the office. Go to an art museum, exercise, or play with children.” Croak said her grandchildren inspire her. An inside look at microchips During Friday evening’s Honors Ceremony cocktail hour, attendees explored the history of microchips at the IEEE Global Museum’s Microchips That Shook the World exhibit. The Global Museum, an IEEE History and Heritage program, develops traveling and digital exhibits focused on the history of technology. The museum’s mission is to promote awareness of how technological progress unfolds over generations and how engineers and researchers build on past achievements to benefit humanity. Drawing from IEEE Spectrum’s Chip Hall of Fame, the Microchips That Shook the World exhibit conveys the roles integrated circuits play in fields such as signal processing, audio engineering, and telecommunications. Co-curators Stephen Cass, Spectrum’s special projects editor, and Daniel Mitchell, the IEEE senior historian, served as onsite docents for guests. The Commodore 64, one of the artifacts on display, brought up many treasured childhood memories for guests who used the home computer. The exhibit also featured a preview of IEEE’s immersive video project “Inside the Microchip,” which delves beneath the silicon surface of the Nvidia NV20 microchip thanks to forensic photography and sophisticated computer-generated renders. The video, which will be released later this year, aims to teach preuniversity students about the technology. Microchips that Shook the World is possible thanks to donations from semiconductor company ASML, the Bill and Dianne Mensch Foundation, and the IEEE Electron Devices and IEEE Electronics Packaging societies The daytime program also spotlighted AI’s use in the visual arts. Kathleen Kramer, the 2025 IEEE president, interviewed artist Refik Anadol, who is scheduled to open an AI art museum on 20 June in Los Angeles. Dataland’s exhibits are powered by an open-access model developed by Anadol’s studio. For the museum’s first exhibition, “Machine Dreams: Rainforest,” the model collected visual data about the natural world from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, London’s Natural History Museum, and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, with their permission. The information, including up to a half billion images, will form the basis for a variety of AI-produced art, Anadol said. Anadol said he was inspired to mix AI with art by the movie Blade Runner. He said he believes “machines can become collaborators,” as “data is a form of pigment.” Data also plays an important role in the work of artist and author Giorgia Lupi. The artist is a partner at design firm Pentagram. Lupi said she uses data to tell stories, including chronicling her struggles with a chronic illness. “Data is an abstraction of our reality,” she said. One of her recent projects, “A Data Love Letter to the Subway,” was shown last year in the Dey Street Passageway in New York City. The video was made using data from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority about each train line, including timetables, ridership, and people’s travel habits. Based on the information Lupi gathered, she documented how commuters traveling on different subway lines encountered one another without realizing it. By exploring data on this year’s IEEE award recipients, she collaborated with IEEE to create an animated video illustrating the shared pathways and collaborations among the honorees. It debuted at the Honors Ceremony. Honoring engineering giants The Honors Ceremony, held at Cipriani 42nd Street, recognized more than 20 laureates and innovators. More than 92 million selfies are taken worldwide every day, PhotoAiD estimates. A selfie wouldn’t be possible without Eric Fossum’s invention of the CMOS image sensor. Developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, Calif., the “camera on a chip” was intended for use in space, but it is now found in smartphones, medical devices, and vehicles. Fossum, an IEEE Life Fellow, received the IEEE Jun-ichi Nishizawa Medal, which recognizes outstanding contributions to materials and device science and technology. “Engineering is a pursuit of what must be possible. [IEEE is] the spirit, the conscience, of our profession.” —Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia The medal, he said, “is at the top of the IEEE staircase of being recognized by your peers.” The IEEE Holonyak Medal for Semiconductor Optoelectronic Technologies went to Steven P. DenBaars, a professor of materials and electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara. DenBaars was honored for his work in semiconductors, which laid the foundation for high-resolution LED and laser displays, modern solid-state lighting, and more. “This work has always been a team effort...I’m excited and curious about the role gallium nitride micro LEDs will play in optical communications,” he said in his acceptance speech. The ceremony ended with the Medal of Honor presentation to Huang, who received a standing ovation. He was recognized for his “leadership in the development of graphics processing units and their application to scientific computing and artificial intelligence.” The IEEE honorary member donated his cash prize to IEEE TryEngineering, which provides teachers with a library of lesson plans and offers educational summer camps. The Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang Foundation matched his gift, and the additional donation is destined to fund scholarships for new graduates. “Engineering is a pursuit of what must be possible. [IEEE is] the spirit, the conscience, of our profession,” Huang said.

Digging deeper into deficit

Pakistan’s external trade balance continues to widen beyond normal cyclical swings, pointing instead to deeper structural constraints that have accumulated over decades. Despite periodic policy interventions and short-term stabilisation efforts, the underlying pattern remains unchanged: import growth consistently outpaces export earnings, leaving the economy dependent on external inflows to bridge a persistent gap. During the first 11 months of the current fiscal year, the trade deficit widened by 17.48 per cent year-on-year to $34.76 billion from $29.58bn in the corresponding period of the previous fiscal year. Export earnings declined by 5.61pc to $27.91bn, while imports rose 5.94pc to $62.66bn. Earlier, in the entire last fiscal year, the trade deficit widened by 9pc to $26.3bn from $24.1bn a year ago. Although exports rose 4.7pc to $32.1bn, imports increased even faster by 6.6pc to $58.4bn, demonstrating a persistent pattern in which import growth outpaces export earnings. Energy remains perhaps the single largest reason Pakistan struggles to achieve a trade surplus. The country imports large quantities of crude oil, petroleum products, LNG, coal, and industrial fuels. During the first 11 months of FY26, petroleum imports exceeded 14m metric tonnes, up 7pc in volume from a year earlier. Our external trade imbalance is rooted in the very structure of the economy, which relies excessively on borrowing and remittances and fails to address structural issues More importantly, the import bill surged 13.7pc to a record $14.9bn. Even though exports fell by 5.6pc during the same period, a substantial share of foreign exchange earnings continued to be absorbed by energy purchases, deepening the trade deficit. Economic growth itself often widens the imbalance because rising industrial activity increases demand for imported energy. Our manufacturing sector also relies heavily on imported machinery, chemicals, raw materials, and intermediate goods. The textile industry, despite being the country’s export backbone, depends on imported machinery, dyes, chemicals, and specialised fibres. In FY25, textile machinery imports increased by 61.5pc to $241.2m, while power-generation equipment imports rose 47.8pc to $616.2m. The pharmaceutical, engineering, automobile, and technology industries exhibit similar dependence on imported components. As a result, producing exports frequently requires substantial imports first, limiting net foreign-exchange gains. A second structural challenge is Pakistan’s narrow export base. Textiles and textile-related products continue to dominate exports. In FY25, textile exports reached $17.89bn, up 7.39pc from the previous year. And, during the first 10 months of FY26, textile exports totalled $15.03bn, a modest 1.3pc increase from $14.83bn a year earlier. Textiles accounted for approximately 59.6pc of Pakistan’s $25.21bn total merchandise exports during this period. While the sector remains a major source of foreign exchange, excessive dependence on a single industry leaves Pakistan vulnerable to fluctuations in global demand, competition, and commodity prices. Countries such as South Korea and China reduced external vulnerabilities by diversifying into electronics, machinery, advanced manufacturing, and technology-intensive exports. Pakistan has yet to make a similar transition. The technological content of Pakistan’s exports also remains relatively low. Globally, the highest export revenues are generated by sectors such as semiconductors, industrial equipment, aerospace components, medical devices, and software-intensive products. Pakistan’s presence in these industries remains limited. The IT and IT-enabled services sector has shown encouraging growth. Exports reached a record $3.8bn in FY25, up 18pc. During the first 10 months of FY26, IT exports rose to approximately $3.3bn, a 12pc increase from $2.95bn a year earlier. However, the sector still represents only around 11–12pc of total merchandise and services exports. Even with sustained double-digit growth, Pakistan remains far behind more diversified export economies in high-value technology sectors. Demographics add another layer of pressure. Pakistan’s annual population growth rate of 2.55pc continues to increase demand for fuel, machinery, vehicles, medicines, electronics, and consumer goods. Unless export capacity expands at a similar pace, import demand naturally grows faster than export earnings, placing persistent pressure on the trade balance. Consumer and business preferences further reinforce import dependence. Imported products often enjoy a reputation for superior quality, particularly in electronics, automobiles, industrial equipment, and luxury goods. During the first nine months of FY26, imports of fully built-up motor vehicles rose 31pc to $263 million. Pakistani exporters also face longstanding obstacles, including high energy costs, infrastructure deficiencies, logistics inefficiencies, regulatory complexity, limited research and development spending, and shortages of skilled labour. According to the Global Talent Competitiveness Index 2025, Pakistan ranked 124th, down from 109th in 2023 and below India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. Moreover, the cost of doing business is estimated to be roughly 34pc higher than in many regional competitors, reducing export competitiveness. Global competition is simultaneously becoming more intense. Countries such as Vietnam, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, and Mexico continue to attract investment in export-oriented manufacturing through stronger infrastructure, larger industrial ecosystems, and more integrated supply chains. As the hybrid government prepares the FY27 budget, the challenge is not merely to narrow the trade deficit in the short term but to address the structural weaknesses that produce it year after year. A durable improvement requires reducing dependence on imported energy, expanding domestic industrial capacity, diversifying exports, improving productivity, and strengthening Pakistan’s competitiveness in global markets. Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, June 8th, 2026

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What will it take to build a home

In Pakistan, owning a house is more than just shelter; it is a symbol of financial stability and social status. However, this goal is slipping out of reach for many as soaring property prices and real wage decline have made homeownership increasingly unaffordable. Before getting into the extent of this problem, we first need to understand the country’s demographics and how the problem is only expected to amplify. By 2100, Pakistan is projected to be the third largest country in the world with more than 500 million inhabitants. Based on the average household size of 6.3 per 2023 census, the country potentially faces an annual demand of 977,497 houses. While that foretells a massive planning and resource challenge, the distribution is even more telling. According to the 2023 census, urban areas, which house 39 per cent of the population, expanded at 3.65pc annually, almost twice the growth rate of 1.90pc in rural areas, driven by the double whammy of high births as well as internal migration. Both this pace and the gap have widened from 2017, when the rate of change for urban areas was 3pc compared to 2pc rural. The ramifications for housing are significant: the top 20 districts by density contain 83m people, yet occupy merely 5pc of the landmass, according to a new policy brief, “Urbanisation, Housing Supply, and the Credit Gap in Pakistan”, published by the Karachi School of Business Leadership’s InsightLab. What this means is that in the absence of proper metropolitan infrastructure, demand is naturally channelled towards more central locations where the supply doesn’t adjust accordingly, thus putting pressure on prices. While demand-side incentives are great at developing depth in the mortgage markets, home ownership is a supply problem as low-cost options are almost negligible in core urban centres Islamabad’s urban housing market best reflects the classic case of rising inaccessibility, where the average per-square-foot price is Rs31,000, whereas Karachi and Lahore stand at Rs27,000 and Rs21,000, respectively, as per Zameen.com. Since Covid-19, Pakistan’s urban housing market has generated staggering returns, with average per-square-foot prices rising by 103pc in Karachi, 115pc in Islamabad, and 90.9pc in Lahore. It’s no surprise then that renting is far more common in Karachi and Islamabad, with 36pc of households renting in both cities compared to 20pc in Lahore. As urbanisation would accelerate even further in search of better economic opportunities and living standards, a growing share of the population will be unable to purchase properties in highly inflated urban centres. Eventually leading to increasing demand for rental housing, which would in turn put upward pressure on rents and gradually narrow the gap between rental and property prices. While the demographic challenge is already hard to arrest, the housing problem is only exacerbated by a lack of credit access as Pakistan’s mortgage markets remain underdeveloped. High appetite from the government has systematically diverted liquidity towards the treasury and crowded out private sector credit, which stands at just 9.2pc of GDP. Within that constrained pool, personal finance comprises only 11pc or Rs1.4 trillion, of which Rs507.2bn trickled down to mortgages as of December 2025. However, this figure substantially overstates the market’s depth, for it clubs house loans to both consumers and bank employees. In fact, the latter accounts for over 56pc of the scheduled banking outstanding housing advances. In terms of volumes, the market is even more skewed as only 34,926 consumers had an outstanding housing loan from a scheduled bank as of December, out of almost 90m deposit accounts. Contrast this with slightly over 200,000 bank employees claiming 91,396 mortgages. These challenges stem partly from the economy’s boom-and-bust cycles, in which borrowing costs fluctuate sharply, discouraging financial institutions from underwriting long-term loans while making markups prohibitively high and volatile for end customers. Moreover, the lack of formal income and credit history, coupled with weak foreclosure laws, made the segment quite unviable. The data attests to this: mortgage non-performing loans stood at Rs14.8bn as of March, which represents 32.8pc of all consumer sector bad debts despite making up only 23.2pc of the segment’s loan portfolio — translating into an infection ratio of 6.4 versus 4.2, respectively. Multiple attempts have been made to address this problem. When the ‘Mera Pakistan Mera Ghar’ (MPMG) scheme was launched in 2020, it was designed as a broad, multi-tiered housing finance program to support both low- and middle-income buyers. It offered four tiers with loan sizes ranging from Rs2m to Rs10m and unit size limits extending up to 10 Marla (2,000 sq. ft) for Tier 3. Except for Tier 1, there was no price cap on housing units and customer pricing was differentiated by tier, which started at 3pc for Tier 1 and went up to 7–9pc for higher tiers, while banks were allowed varied spreads on top of Kibor [Karachi Interbank Offered Rate]. This structure gave borrowers not only some predictability on pricing but also flexibility across income segments, including access to upper-tier customers. By June 2022, the scheme had been suspended amid economic and political uncertainty. But almost three and a half years later, it made a comeback under a new branding, albeit with some key changes. First, the end customer rates are cheaper and fixed at 5pc for the first 10 years. Second, the markup subsidy is to be provisioned in the federal budget instead of a refinancing facility by the central bank, due to the International Monetary Fund conditionalities. Though these amendments may make the scheme more attractive to borrowers while still maintaining monetary prudence, the more important question is: how did the previous intervention fare? According to available numbers, MPMG received applications worth Rs514bn, of which Rs235bn was approved, and only Rs99bn were disbursed. It was complemented by ‘Naya Pakistan Housing Program’, a supply-side intervention wherein the government assured to provide 5m houses. While the targets were quite ambitious, the reality fell well short, with only 21,980 low-cost units completed, about 52,000 under construction and 95,084 in the planning phase. That’s where the biggest learning lies; while demand-side incentives are great at developing depth in the mortgage markets, home ownership in Pakistan is largely a supply problem as low-cost options are almost negligible in core urban centres. Moreover, the lack of mass transit and infrastructure deters residents from moving to the more affordable options in the peripheries. Unless those are addressed, cheap loans will only go so far. Mutaher Khan is co-founder of Data Darbar and Head of InsightLab at KSBL. Hasan Umair and Shahzaib Abbasi are analysts at InsightLab. Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, June 1st, 2026

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