About Us

The National Science Bowl Pakistan (NSB-P) is an science knowledge competition modeled on the successful quiz bowl format of the US National Science Bowl.

The goal of NSB-P is to inspire children with the love of science. While there is an impressive “maker” movement in science, NSB-P hopes to complement this by introducing a more traditional memory-based competition that builds upon a rich Pakistani tradition of such competitions like “Bait-Baazi”. Students are asked questions in Biology, Chemistry, Earth & Space, Mathematics and Physics that both test their knowledge base and quick analytical abilities. The team format encourages collaboration and the fast-paced quiz structure generates excitement. The questions are not strictly curriculum-based and therefore encourage students to self-explore and be able to develop their own interests and personal scientific journey.

Like many innovative efforts, NSB-P started though a mixture of passion, relationships, and happenstance driven by students who loved pursuing science and teachers and supporters who dream of a more curious world. Our first event was a pilot run in the summer of 2019 with help of US high school students from the Lexington High School Science Bowl teams (Amaan Khwaja, Daniel Zhou, Gideon Tzafriri, Ludwig Tay, and Sean Fei) and supported in Pakistan by the Pakistan Innovation Fund (under the leadership of Dr. Athar Osama), the Center for Economic Research Pakistan (lead by Maroof Syed & Dr. Asim Khwaja), and a team of motivated LUMS faculty and students (Dr. Yasira Waqar, Habiba Malik , Injila Rasul, Moeed Asad, Qasim Farooq, and Ummara Waheed). Since then the event has expended and continues to expand as more student and schools join.

Our hope is to continue to grow on the positive momentum and expand the event so that it can move beyond the urban areas and start engaging with student and schools from rural and more remote areas across all the country.

Talent is not confined by race, religion, or income and we seek to inshAllah celebrate talent wherever it is. To do so we need to draw on the collective and volunteer spirit of program alums, students, educators, naturally curious people, and general well-wishers. If you would like to join us or find out more on how you can help please email us at [email protected].