Arbab Ibrahim Arbab, assistant professor of physics at Omdurman Ahlia University in Sudan, was a student in ICTP's first Diploma Course. His road to success began in Trieste.

Sudan Success

The year 1990 was not a good year for Arbab Ibrahim Arbab. Although he had graduated with a bachelor's degree from the University of Khartoum in his native Sudan a year before, he had spent much of his time since then in search of secure employment--first in the Department of Physics at his alma mater, where he had hoped to teach while earning a master's degree, and then in Libya, where he taught high school physics part-time.
"I wanted to stay in Sudan to continue my education. While the University of Khartoum had shown some promise in the 1970s and 1980s, by the time I was ready to begin graduate school almost all the good people had left. Political uncertainties were making a difficult situation even worse."
"I was running out of options," Arbab recalls, "when my former professor at the University of Khartoum, Mohammed Saeed, suggested that I apply to the newly created Diploma Course at ICTP in Trieste, Italy. I didn't know anything about ICTP but Saeed was a frequent visitor to the Centre and he assured me that it would be a good place for me to be."
Arbab was accepted and, with 21 other young students from the developing world, he became a member of the inaugural class of the Diploma Course.
Arbab's first few months as a Diploma Course student were not easy. "The courses not only proved difficult in content," he explains, "but they required me to think and learn in entirely new ways. Previously I could excel by simply memorising information. Now I had to solve problems. I'll never forget that one of the first examinations in the Diploma Course was an open book test. That surprised me because having the text book in front of my eyes made me think I could look up the answers. Nothing could have been farther from the truth."
Arbab also credits the Diploma Course with teaching him how to teach. He notes that for the first time in his life, he was "required to make oral presentations and to defend his arguments before his peers," helping him acquire the organisational skills and gain the confidence that he needed to be a good teacher.
After adjusting to the rigours of his new environment, Arbab enjoyed a successful second semester and was among those who received ICTP's first Diplomas. "It was a proud moment for all of us. We had come from many different countries and cultures and had both competed and cooperated throughout the year to attain our goal. As members of the Centre's first Diploma Course, we enjoyed both a feeling of individual and collective achievement that made the moment special." Today some of the Diploma students with whom he graduated are among Arbab's friends, including Egyptian-born Shaaban Khalil, who is now a post doc at the University of Sussex in the UK, and West Indies-born Surujhdeo Seunarine, who is a post doc at Christchurch University in New Zealand.
Between 1993 and 2000, Arbab earned his Ph.D. in physics at the University of Khartoum, where he also taught undergraduate students first as a lecturer and then as an assistant professor. Insufficient resources, large class sizes and poor pay made life as a scientist difficult. "The department," he says, "lacked both the size and energy to be a dynamic centre for teaching and research." Reflecting a problem common to many university physics departments in Africa, Arbab noted that the next youngest faculty member in his university was more than 20 years older than him. He also observes that he had to teach four classes and 200 students each semester, leaving little time for research.

Things are now looking up for Arbab. Last year, he became an assistant professor at Omdurman Ahlia University in Sudan, one of the best institutions of higher education in the country. "The teaching load is lighter and the facilities are better equipped." More importantly, he notes, "professors are given a greater sense of autonomy and are able to devise and pursue their own research agendas." In Arbab's case that means time to study and publish in the fields of cosmology and astrophysics with special attention to questions related to vacuum decaying and fluid repulsion.
Arbab was appointed an ICTP Regular Associate in 2000 and, just this spring, was named dean at Comboni Computer College in Khartoum. Recent changes in Sudanese law will allow him to simultaneously hold both his professorship at Omdurman Ahlia and his administrative job at Comboni.
All of this means that he will now be able to meld his skills in research, teaching and administration in ways that professors in Northern universities take for granted.
There is no better testimony to the success of the ICTP Diploma Course than Arbab's current good fortune. Much of this has to do with Arbab's own skills and drive, but much also has to do with the strong foundation in analysis, research and teaching that the Diploma Course provided him with a decade ago.

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