An afternoon picnic with a patient cousin opened the floodgate to Maqsood Khan's present-day curiosity in irrigation engineering.
Khan is currently researching the movement of irrigation water in soil in pursuit of his doctorate degree through the Individual Interdisciplinary Studies Graduate Program (IISGP) at UBC.
He recounts how during Grade 11, he accompanied his cousin, a civil engineer, on a picnic in his home province of Balochistan, Pakistan. During the idyllic outing, Khan and his cousin encountered a weir -- an irrigation structure that measures water flow in irrigation canals and channels -- and the teenager asked his cousin how it worked.
"I was really interested in his explanation and how irrigation water management would help conserve water for the farmers," says Khan.
That incident helped him decide to pursue a career in agricultural and irrigation engineering.
As a youngster he had always been aware that his province, though semi-arid, produced more than half the apples and grapes in the country by using ground water as its main irrigation source.
"Water is scarce in my country," he says. "The occasional rain during growing season is a bonus to crops to be irrigated."
After he finished his undergraduate degree, Khan went to work for the Balochistan Dept. of Agriculture. But remembering his father's stories of how modern farming practices doubled crop yields in Australia, and realizing that many of the best agricultural minds in his country had studied abroad, Khan decided to study overseas.
After completing his master's degree in North Carolina and starting a PhD at Colorado State University, Khan transferred to UBC to complete his research through IISGP.
Founded in 1971, IISGP is the first program of its kind in Canada. It lets students design their own programs in consultation with a faculty supervisory committee to include more than one disciplinary field in their research.
The program was conceived as a "practical response to the desire for liberalization in the academic organization of knowledge," says Fine Arts Prof. Rhodri Windsor-Liscombe, chair of IISGP. There are currently 75 graduate students registered in the program.
Khan firmly believes in the value of an interdisciplinary approach to his research work.
"Nowadays, you can't solve any problem alone -- you need an interdisciplinary approach," says Khan, who works under Bio-Resource Engineering Prof. Sietan Chieng.
Khan isn't sure whether he will return to Pakistan after he earns his doctorate but he has high praise for his time in B.C.
"The best thing about Vancouver and UBC is the multiculturalism," he says. "I have made friends from Canada, India, China, and other countries here."
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