A student engineering society in Islamabad has done it again. The ASME student section at the International Islamic University Islamabad (IIUI) has won the ASME Global Achievement Award for 2026, the second year in a row the mechanical engineering students have taken the honour from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. IIUI is one of only five Pakistani universities recognised this year, out of about 80 student sections honoured worldwide.
- Award: ASME Global Achievement Award 2026, from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers
- Winners: the ASME student section, Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIUI
- Field: about 80 student sections honoured globally, five of them in Pakistan
- Streak: back-to-back wins, after the 2025 award went to only 13 sections worldwide
- Faculty advisor: Dr Asad Asghar Janjua
What the ASME Global Achievement Award Recognises
The award is ASME’s way of marking out student sections that do far more than exist on paper. It recognises sections for excellence in promoting engineering practice, leadership, outreach and professional development among students. Sections earn it through a year of documented activity: competitions, technical talks, community outreach and the unglamorous committee work that keeps a student society running.
That makes the repeat win the real story. In 2025, IIUI’s section received the ASME Achievement Award when only 13 student sections in the world earned it, with IIUI among four Pakistani universities on the list. This year the field widened to about 80 honoured sections, and IIUI stayed on it, one of five Pakistani universities recognised. Winning once can be a good year. Winning twice, under a new student cabinet, points to a system that keeps working.
The Students and the Advisor Behind the Streak
The university credits the guidance of Faculty Advisor Dr Asad Asghar Janjua and the work of the section’s student leadership: President Khayyam Ayub, Vice President Muhammad Saboor Akhtar, General Secretary Abdul Hannan, Managing Director Bilal Akbar and Treasurer Hassan Khan, backed by the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Faculty of Engineering and Technology.
Photo: IIUI
The section’s year is easy to see in its events. Its flagship showcase, Blueprint Battles 2.0, drew more than 55 undergraduate students from mechanical and electrical engineering programmes to present technical projects before a six-member faculty jury. The section also represented the university at the Islamabad Science Festival 2026, where a 25-student delegation presented projects on waste management, sustainable materials, mining safety, soil moisture control and green infrastructure. Since its official registration, the section has been part of ASME’s global network of more than 350 student sections and over 16,000 engineering students.
Why It Matters Beyond One Campus
Pakistan’s engineering graduates compete for jobs and postgraduate places against applicants from all over the world, and employers read signals like this. A section that meets an international society’s standards two years running tells them IIUI students are learning teamwork, documentation and professional habits alongside their degrees. It also gives younger students on campus a visible target: the cabinet that won this year’s ASME Global Achievement Award was itself inspired by the one before it.
Islamabad’s universities have been collecting honours this season. Quaid-i-Azam University holds a place in the world’s top 400 in the QS rankings, UMT recently awarded 4,363 degrees at its 29th convocation, and skills programmes are expanding access for students across Punjab, including free Google Career Certificates for minority students. The IIUI win adds a student-led chapter to that run, one powered not by a ranking table but by students organising, building and showing up, twice in a row.
Sources
- IIUI, ASME-IIUI Student Section Wins Global Achievement Award 2026 for Second Consecutive Year
- IIUI, ASME IIUI Energizes Campus Innovation with Blueprint Battles 2.0
- IIUI, IIUI’s ASME Student Section Receives International Achievement Award (2025)
- Photo: IIUI
- Photo: IIUI
Umar Farooq is the founder and editor of Good News Pakistan. An engineer by profession and a writer by passion, he started the site in December 2022 to share good news from Pakistan, and has since written and edited more than 200 articles about its people, sports, science, business and world records. He believes the story of Pakistan is bigger than its headlines, and that good news, told honestly, is worth telling every day.