Moneir Aslam

She gave Pakistani women an hour of their own on PTV, every night. The programme was called Khawateen Times. Its creator was Muneeza Hashmi. Born 1946 in Shimla. Raised in lahore. Younger daughter of Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Alys Faiz. Kinnaird College, a master's from the University of the Punjab, and a second master's in education from the University of Hawaii in 1981. She joined PTV in 1967 as an assistant producer. Her father's name opened no doors she didn't push herself. She still says she got the job on a sifarish. People with anti-Faiz sentiments tried to victimise her. Promotions were delayed. ACRs were messed up. Foreign trips were held back. She survived. Over more than 40 years in media. Became General Manager of PTV Lahore in 1998. The first woman to hold the post. The first woman Director of Programmes at PTV. She held the role when she retired in 2004. Introduced gender training programmes. Produced a UNDP-PTV documentary on the portrayal of women in the media. Restricted the showing of violence against women on PTV. Raised bold issues about women's rights, which she says was not easy. Launched PTV World from Lahore, and saw the station earn record revenue. Joined HUM TV in 2005 as General Manager of International Relations. She also acted in Pakistan's first English-language feature film, Beyond the Last Mountain (1976), and as a human rights activist in Haseena Moin's Paani Per Likha Tha (1993). In 2010 she was elected President of the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association, the first Pakistani and, in its 60-year history, the only woman to hold the post. In April 2012, at the Brisbane conference, she was unanimously re-elected, with no one from the other 67 member countries standing against her. She served three terms. She later returned as board president when it became the Public Media Alliance. In 2013 she held the first Benazir Bhutto Chair for Peace, Reconciliation and Development at Lahore College for Women University. In 2019 she became the first woman to chair the Lahore Arts Council's board of governors. Trustee of the Faiz Foundation and main organiser of the Faiz Festival Lahore, and is Creative Media Head at the Kashf Foundation. She wrote Kaun Hoon Main? (2014), interviews with notable Pakistani women, and Conversations with My Father (2022). Pride of Performance, 2003. NHK's President's Prize, 2015. Faiz sang of a world where women have a voice. She put one on air. Muneeza Hashmi. Pakistan Zindabad. 🇵🇰

She was a girl from Karachi fascinated with human body. Now A rare genetic condition carries her name. Asifa Akhtar. Born 1971. Karachi, Pakistan. Then she went to London. Then Heidelberg. Then Munich. Then Freiburg. Then she became Vice President of an institution that has produced 18 Nobel laureates. She was fascinated by how the human body works since her school days. She finished her A-Levels in Karachi and enrolled at University College London. BSc in Biology, 1993. Then a PhD in genetics at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in London. 1997. Studying transcriptional regulation in Richard Treisman's laboratory. The same institution later renamed the Francis Crick Institute. She could have stayed in the UK. She could have moved to the United States. She chose Germany. Postdoctoral fellow at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg. 1998 to 2001. Then the Adolf-Butenandt-Institute in Munich. Both among the most prestigious molecular biology research environments in the world. In 2001 she became Group Leader at EMBL Heidelberg. In 2009 she moved to the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg. In 2013 she was appointed Director and Scientific Member. Heading the Department of Chromatin Regulation. She studies epigenetics. The factors beyond DNA that control which genes are switched on and which are switched off. How the same genetic information produces a neuron and a liver cell and a skin cell. How errors in this regulation cause cancer, neurological disorders, and developmental disease. Her laboratory focuses specifically on the MOF protein complex and dosage compensation, the mechanism by which cells balance gene expression between males and females. In a busy field, a Nature Index profile said, she has a history of asking original questions. Early Career European Life Science Organisation Award. 2008. EMBO Member. 2013. Feldberg Prize. 2017. German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. 2019. Order of Merit of the State of Baden-Württemberg. 2026. In July 2020 she became the first international female Vice President of the Biology and Medicine Section of the Max Planck Society. Re-elected for a second term in 2023. The Max Planck Society has produced 18 Nobel laureates since 1948. She helps oversee it. Then in 2021 came the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize. Germany's highest scientific honour. Selected from 131 candidates. Shortlisted to 10. She won. €2.5 million in research funding to use however she chose. She said the first thing she felt was that she could now do so much more science. My heart beats for the young scientists, she says. Academic science is a beautiful example of integration because you have people from all over the world exchanging knowledge beyond boundaries, cultures or prejudice. A girl from Karachi who did her A-Levels in a city the world does not associate with Nobel Prize science is now helping oversee the institution that has produced more Nobel laureates than most countries on earth. Asifa Akhtar. Pakistan Zindabad. 🇵🇰