All of Wake County lives inside his computer.
We are born. We die. We grow. We change. Society recalibrates.
It knows what time those who work in the Research Triangle Park wake up. What we’ve eaten for breakfast. How many kids (if any) we have. What we do on our weekends. There are all manner of variables.
Dr. Zeeshan-ul-Hassan Usmani, distinguished visiting fellow and our honored guest from Pakistan, has created a predictive simulation model built specifically around the microcosm of Wake County. Within his data banks, the real ways that people exist can be carefully mapped out in model-form.
He can pinpoint a suicide bomber. He can show us what a zero scarcity world looks like. And he can show us how policies can change our society – before they’re implemented.
In effect, with the power of predictive analytics, Dr. Usmani can predict our future – before it happens.
More about Dr. Zeeshan-ul-hassan Usmani
Dr. Usmani is a Fulbright Scholar and Eisenhower Fellow. He holds a PhD and MS in Computer Science from the Florida Institute of Technology. As part of his Master’s thesis, he has developed a simulation of supermarkets to observe and quantify the effects of herd behavior on impulse shopping by customers.
His PhD work focuses on simulation and modeling of blast waves in open and confined spaces. His work has been mentioned in Wall Street Journal, AOL News, Wired Magazine, NPR, MIT’s Technology Review, Florida Today, and The Economist. He has authored dozens of research papers, articles, and several books. His research strengths include real-world simulation, programming human emergent behaviors, and modeling of catastrophic events. He is founder of Pakistan Body Count – the oldest running tally of suicide bombing and drone attacks in Pakistan.
Dr. Usmani has worked in Citi Bank New York, Discover Financial in Illinois, Fulbright Academy of Science and Technology in Maine, Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute, in Topi, Pakistan as an Assistant Professor, and as Chief of Research at Interactive Group in Islamabad. Currently he is the CEO of Go-Fig Solutions and a Visiting Scholar at Watson Institute of International Studies at Brown University. He lives in Islamabad with his one wife and three kids.
About DISRUPT
A bi-annual speaker event organized by NC Eisenhower Fellows, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, the Research Triangle Foundation and Designbox, Disrupt brings truly world-shaping innovators from around the globe to North Carolina’s Research Triangle.
At RTP HQ, our guests share their personal journeys — and then answer questions from the crowd. Hors d’oeuvres from the speaker’s native country will be served in a pairing with North Carolina craft beers and networking follows.