“I believe life is about experiences. Each teaches you a lesson, and it is up to you to decide what to bring to the table, whether the positive or the negative ones”
Saad believes that in life it is essential to focus on positive experiences, as this is the best way to offer an optimistic perspective to those who are still learning life’s lessons. He hails from Wazirabad, one of the oldest towns in the Punjab region, and since when he was 11, he began moving for education purposes. His father sent him to a boarding school, believing that a change of environment would motivate him to focus on his studies – and indeed, it worked. During his matriculation years, he became one of the top students of the entire district earning a scholarship that covered his full tuition fee for college, where he chose to specialize in engineering. In Pakistani culture father-son relationships are often not openly expressive, but Saad knew he made his father proud. During his bachelor’s studies, he specialized in computer engineering. It was during this time that, alongside his growing passion for this field of study, he discovered an interest in teaching and decided to pursue a career in academia.
“I think I am good at explaining things, making them easier to understand. I pursued this profession by choice, not by chance”.
Saad completed his master’s degree in the same field at the University of Lahore where he simultaneously worked as a lab engineer. Here he specialized in machine learning, worked with sensors and hardware prototypes and designed one of his own for his thesis research, a glove aimed at capturing hand movements in sign language. Due to time constraints, he focused only on the alphabet and numbers, leading to the publication of an article that marked his first academic contribution in Pakistan. “It was a tough period, but I did it for career growth, knowledge, and to explore the field of academia”. He later became a lecturer at the University of Sialkot.
Saad has always been highly pragmatic in his choices, and Italy was the only country where he applied for a PhD, submitting applications to over 50 universities. Differently from other well-reputed countries, the Italian application procedure is open, public, fair and based on merit without requiring prior acceptance from a supervisor. With his acceptance letter from the University of Turin, he promptly began his visa procedure. This allowed him to arrive in Turin the very first day of his PhD, an uncommon achievement among Pakistani students.
His bureaucratic challenges, however, began in Italy. For four years he relied on the Pakistani health insurance instead of the Italian one, as the latter was both expensive and difficult to obtain. Fortunately, he rarely needed medical assistance. It took him a full year to open a bank account, as he first had to secure a residency permit, which required annual renewal. Each year, this process involved resubmitting his entire documentation and attending a fingerprint appointment, typically scheduled approximately seven months after application.
Saad considers himself fortunate to have worked on a research topic he was passionate about, free from strict deadlines and excessive pressures. Most importantly, he was able to build a strong relationship with his supervisors. Beginning his PhD in 2021, Saad specialised in a specific domain of Natural Language Processing (NLP), focusing on semantic parsing and text generation – key components of Discourse Representation Structure (DRS). This framework helps machine understand how different parts of a conversation connect, facilitating both text-to-logic (semantic parsing) and logic-to-text (text generation) transformations. His research extended across three languages – English, Italian and Urdu – demonstrating that these techniques are universally applicable to any language. In 2024 Saad transitioned to a postdoctoral position where he shifted from working with abstract data to more practical, real-world applications. His postdoctoral research focused on leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) to analyse the relationships between people’s opinions, behaviours, and perspectives regarding Turin’s transportation system (GTT) and government policies, aiming to identify areas for improvement. This approach, known as perspectivism, fascinated him, as it cantered on human viewpoints. He firmly believes that “millions of examples with no meaningful information are far less-valuable than 100 examples rich in insight”.
Throughout both his PhD and postdoc, Saad contributed to several research publications. Among them, he is particularly proud of his role in developing an Urdu dataset, which was enhanced using data augmentation techniques. The resulting model is currently state-of-the-art in its field. Beyond academic achievements, Saad cherishes the lifelong relationships he has built with his supervisors. They guided him not only as mentors but also treated him with warmth and respect—first as a student, then as a colleague after his PhD defense. He deeply values this dynamic, considering it “the true beauty of research, where mutual respect fosters both personal and academic growth, leading to highly advantageous results.” He has recently finished his post-doc and chose to explore career opportunities beyond Italy. His decision was shaped by various factors, including limited prospects for permanent residency, financial stability concerns due to inflation, and the challenge of language adaptation. Because of the long hours spent in the lab conducting experiments, he had limited opportunities to interact with Italians. While they were always kind to him, English was not always the preferred language, making communication difficult. He often jokes with colleagues and friends from his hometown about this experience, yet deep down, he feels as though he “spent four years in silence”. This isolation profoundly affected him, intensifying his longing for his country, culture, friends, environment, and above all, his family—his greatest priority. Looking ahead, regardless of where life takes him, his goal is clear: to live with his family, to share the entirety of his Italian experience back in Pakistan, and to work – at least – in an English-speaking country.