A Nasir Wins an Emmy Award
Members of Ahmadiyya Community have previously won a Nobel Prize, Grammy Award, Rhodes Scholarship. Well, add to the list.
Our dear brother Hamid Sheikh who has a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Texas, Austin was awarded an Emmy Award in Engineering (yes, there is such a category). He will be going to Hollywood to receive his award on October 28th, Insha’allah. You can read more details here.
For those of us who may not know Hamid much, here are the details. He is a devout Ahmadi Muslim who has served the Jama’at in various capacities for over two decades. He currently serves as the Tarbiyat Secretary for Dallas Jama’at as well as the Gulf region, and teaches in Dallas Jama’at Tahir Academy. We spoke to him via phone and here are his responses:
Ansarullah: So tell us about this great news.
Hamid: I graduated with a PhD in Electrical Engineering in 2004. Back when I started my PhD, I worked with my good friend and senior Zhou Wang, who was the lead researcher on the project, towards the development of Structural Similarity (SSIM) metric. Fast forward about 12 years, and our research team was selected to receive an engineering Emmy award. It is a very prestigious and rare award that I did not even know my professor had nominated the team for. Not only is it rare, it is also unusual award as almost everyone associates Emmy awards with acting & directing and not with the technology that enables television broadcast.
Ansarullah: When did you come to know about winning the Emmy for Engineering?
Hamid: Just out of the blue I got an email a few weeks ago that we were selected. Due to the terms and conditions of Emmys, I could not disclose it earlier. All through that period, I felt stunned, not knowing how to comprehend this big news. I couldn't even tell my wife right away.
Ansarullah: How does someone win this award? Like, is there a process for it?
Hamid: Well, again, I had no idea about it. The same paper had won a Best Paper award many years ago. Now we are getting recognized for the same work due to its impact on the television industry. Like all awards, there is a process involved where someone nominates a company or an individual (or team) for their contributions, and the Emmy committee evaluates the nomination. This year, our professor decided to pursue it and nominated the team for it without even telling us. He figured it was such a shot in the dark that he didn't feel he needed to make a big deal by involving the rest of us.
Ansarullah: What exactly was your paper about?
Hamid: The research was on the topic of image and video quality. As humans, perception of quality is very natural. For example, when your TV stream gets all pixilated, you can almost immediately and unconsciously observe it and complain about it. However, to a computer, all pictures are equal: good quality ones and bad quality ones. Making a computer determine the quality of an image or video is very hard. “Quality assessment” technology tries to automatically determine if the quality of an image or video has been degraded during capture, recording, transmission, or display process. People had been working in this domain for 30+ years before us, but Alhamdulillah SSIM turned out to be hugely successful and game changing technology.
Here is the exact detail:
Award for Zhou Wang, Alan Bovik, Hamid Sheikh, and Eero Simoncelli for Structural Similarity (SSIM) Video Quality Measurement Model
Structural Similarity (SSIM) is an algorithm for estimating the perceived quality of an image or video. Its computational simplicity and ability to accurately predict human assessment of visual quality has made it a standard tool in broadcast and post-production houses throughout the television industry. SSIM uses powerful neuroscience-based models of the human visual system to achieve breakthrough quality prediction performance. Unlike previous complex error models that required special hardware, it can be easily applied in real time on common processor software. SSIM is now a widely-used perceptual video quality measure, used to test and refine video quality throughout the global cable and satellite TV industry, and directly affects the viewing experiences of tens of millions of viewers daily. [Source: 67th Engineering Emmy Awards press release]
Ansarullah: So many people chase these prestigious awards all their life but they don’t win. Here you are who never had a “mission” to win an Emmy and yet you have won this award. Why and how?
Hamid: Only Allah knows, and I don't know what to say or how to answer this question. During the weeks where I couldn’t disclose this news publicly, I had good time to think about the exact same question, and I can only accept it as Allah’s will, and absolutely zero pursuit on my part. Mathematicians will tell you that it is not possible to get anything out of zero, but only Allah can multiply zero into something so grand. It is the prayers of Huzoor (may Allah be his helper) and my family and elders, and Allah’s reward for the service I did for the Jama’at— the opportunity and capacity for which also came from Allah's Grace. But then there are so many people more devout and serving than me. So I am still speechless. It is nothing less than a miracle, you know. It is really a miracle. What else can you call it?
Ansarullah: Who did you tell about this award first?
Hamid: I told my wife, called a friend, and then wrote a letter for prayers to Huzoor.
Ansarullah: What happens next?
Hamid: I guess, I will now go to California at the end of October for the ceremony. My mother is also coming. It is a really unbelievable moment. I still want to keep it low key but sharing with my Ansar brothers for their prayers.
Ansarullah: Any other thoughts you would like to share with the readers?
Hamid: I am still struggling to find out Allah’s grand plan in this. I mean what is Almighty Allah’s purpose in me winning this award. That’s the biggest question on my mind now. I request all the Jama’at members to remember me in prayers.
