Yousuf Mahbubul Islam completed his PhD (1988) from Strathclyde University, Glasgow, UK, in Design, Manufacturing & Engineering Management. He was recipient of a David Livingstone award as well as a Charles Wallace award during his PhD research. Having stood first in his Master’s class he was recommended for an automatic transfer to the PhD program at Strathclyde University. He completed his Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical & Electronic Engineering from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh in 1978 with 100% marks for his software project.
At present he is working as a vice chancellor at Daffodil International University (DIU) since July, 2105. Also, he is a full time professor in the department of software engineering at DIU.
The idea of teaching programming using participatory teaching techniques and using social media to solve learning gaps was born out of the teaching experiences of Dr Islam – the Bangladesh Project Leader of the LEADHER project. Given his keen interest in helping students learn, he contributed to various other researches e.g., low-cost interactive distance education without the use of Internet, low cost data collection from remote rural regions, collection and delivery of agricultural market information from rural regions, low cost order, distribution management and sales monitoring in rural areas, secure national voting through mobile phones, e-learning, m-learning and participatory techniques that transfer ownership, use of Mind Maps in student counseling, psychological counseling, use of participatory techniques in distance education and face to face classrooms.