Professor Dr Saleha Naghmi Habibullah

Dr. Saleha Naghmi Habibullah is Professor of Statistics at Kinnaird College for Women, Lahore. During the very first decade of her professional career, she initiated a number of projects and programs for the enhancement of statistical education in Pakistan, and this endeavor continues to this day. Her initiatives in the 1980’s and  1990’s include the Annual Statistical Exhibition (KASE), the Kinnaird Intercollegiate Statistical Competition (KISC), Kinnaird’s Visiting Statistical Exhibition (KVSE), the Statistics Teachers’ Educational Program (STEP), the Kinnaird College Statistics FESTIVAL (Forum for the Enlightenment of Students, Teachers, Innovators, Veterans, Amateurs and Learners) and the Data Analysis Talent Award (DATA) which attracted entries from different countries of the world. In her capacity as Head of the Statistics Department at Kinnaird College, Dr. Naghmi was instrumental in the launch of the MSc Program in Statistics in 2003 which was replaced by the MPhil Statistics Program in the year 2009. During her tenure as Director Research at Kinnaird during the period 2011 to 2017, she played an important role in streamlining research mechanisms at the BS level and, more importantly, in motivating colleagues from various departments to engage in research-work and to enroll in MPhil and PhD Programs in their respective disciplines. Dr. Naghmi is very well-travelled and, in addition to her Masters in Statistics from the University of Toronto (Canada) in 1983-84 under the Central Overseas Training (COT) Scholarship Program of the Government of Pakistan, and her research-work at the University of Washington (USA) in 2011 under the HEC Sabbatical Leave Fellowship Program, she has presented papers at a large number of international conferences in approximately 35 countries of the world. She has more than 75 publications to her credit including 7 journal publications and 63 papers/articles in conference proceedings out of which 30 are proceedings of international conferences hosted by multiple countries around the world. Her contributions include research supervision of approximately 25 M.Phil. and B.S. students to date, and this important activity is ongoing with new batches of students. In addition to her dedicated services at Kinnaird College, Dr. Naghmi has held a number of prestigious positions at various forums. She was selected Educational Ambassador for Pakistan by the highly prestigious American Statistical Association in February 2018, rendered services as Vice President of the International Association for Statistical Education for the year 2018-19, and is rendering voluntary services as a Deputy Director at the International Statistical Literacy Project (ISLP), as a member of the Advisory Board on Ethics (ABE) of the International Statistical Institute, and as Honorary Executive Director of the Pak Institute of Statistical Training And Research (PISTAR). In her capacity as Deputy Director of ISLP, she has been the originator and team-lead for the launch of the International Day of Statistical Literacy (a day-long online conference), two of which have been held in the years 2024 and 2025 successfully. Dr. Naghmi is the recipient of numerous national and international honors and awards. In September 1989, she was awarded the First Prize of Rs. 25,000/- by the National Book Council of Pakistan on account of the research paper on the Inverted Bivariate Normal Distribution that appeared in the April 1987 issue of the Pakistan Journal of Statistics. In January 1994, she was awarded the Third Prize by the Common-Wealth Association of Sciences, Technology and Mathematics Educators on account of the paper entitled “Efforts to Promote Project-Based Teaching of Introductory Statistics in the City of Lahore”. In April 2000, the 10th Star Award was bestowed upon her by South Asia Publications, Karachi on account of outstanding performance in the field of Education. In 2007, she was selected for the Complex Systems Summer School organized by the world–renowned Santa Fe Institute (Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA). In December 2010, she was awarded the Best University Teacher Award by the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC). In August, 2023, she was awarded the Societal Impact Award by the Caucus of Women in Statistics and Data Science (CWS) during a prestigious international conference held in Toronto, Canada. In February 2025, she was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by Kinnaird College for Women on account of her dedicated service and exceptional significant contributions for more than 45 years, this being the first-ever lifetime achievement award in the 112-year history of the College.