Suspicious funded research at the University of Waterloo destroyed career of a student
Muhammad Shafique was an accomplished software engineer. He was earning a lucrative salary (nearly $80,000) when he quit his job in August 2008 to start graduate studies at Carleton University. He started a PhD at the University of Waterloo (UW) from September 2010. At Cheriton School of Computer Science (SCS) UW, Dr. A was his PhD supervisor while Dr. C was the co-supervisor and his research salary provider. Although Shafique worked with them for more than 3 years, he did not know that Dr. C and Dr. A were not regular employees of UW. He did not know that they were working on a research project allocated more than $5,000,000 research funding. Dr. C was the principle while Dr. A and a professor from Brazil were the co-investigators. Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Health Promotion, Ministry of Natural Resources and some companies and a university from Brazil were partners in the project. After experiencing numerous professional misconducts by Dr. A and knowing about the unseen research project, Shafique approached SCS administration and provided details about the suspicious research activities of his supervisors. He refused to work with them from April 2014.
UW was obliged to investigate the complain and face the consequences however it apparently did nothing. A regular faculty member Dr. Ka appointed as new supervisor in May 2014 and Shafique was asked to pass the proposal exam to continue PhD. Unprofessional and humiliating attitude of Dr. Ka kept Shafique under consistent pressure. No research feedback and help, and no access to the needed hardware for experimentation were additional elements of stress. Shafique continued his work with the help of researchers in SCS and other universities and claimed solving a two decade old research problem associated with social networking systems like Facebook and Twitter. Dr. Ka started demanding solutions of unsolvable research problems and research comparisons which were almost impossible to produce. He breached IP policy of UW by sharing Shafique's scholarly writing with another faculty member.
Shafique passed the proposal exam in June 2015 but Dr. Ka resigned from supervision by mentioning that Shafiqu's research was useless and that he had some unknown personal conflict with him. Shafique complained to SCS administration but nothing happened. The administration asked him to withdraw from PhD because having no supervisor amounted to insufficient research progress and a valid reason to ask a student to withdraw. This was against the policies and guidelines of UW. No professor at UW agreed to supervise him. He did a research presentation at the University of Toronto and a professor agreed to co-supervise him however UW refused to arrange a local supervisor. In March 2016, Shafique filed a grievance for internal hearing at UW and asked questions about the research project and supervision by ad-hoc employees Dr. A and Dr. C with a clear statement about the motives of Dr. Ka. UW grievance reply contained false statements, twisted texts, and invalid interpretation of facts, policies and guidelines. The questions about the research project and Dr. C were not addressed. Shafique was informed that Dr. A was not his supervisor but no information about his actual supervisor during the first 3 years of his PhD at SCS was provided. He later on discovered that Dr. C, the principle investigator of the research project and his research salary provider, was his supervisor although he never had a meeting with Dr. C during PhD studies at SCS UW.
Shafique had invested his career into earning a PhD and also had to pay off a pile of student loan along with feeding his family. Repeated demands of UW to withdraw mounted much more pressure on him. From July/August 2015, he started having chest pain in and around his heart (the"chest pain") with high blood pressure and heartbeat in stressful situations. In January 2016, he was diagnosed having severe depression and anxiety. He was already having poor mental health due to the incidents started after the complain about research activities of Dr. C and Dr. A. His enrollment was terminated in July 2016 without prior notice and giving right to file a grievance from the termination decision. He was asked to pay more than $84,000 student loan to governments of Ontario and Canada.
Shafique had invested his career into earning a PhD and also had to pay off a pile of student loan. Repeated demands of UW to withdraw mounted much more pressure on him. From July/August 2015, he started having chest pain in and around his heart (the "chest pain") with high blood pressure and heartbeat in stressful situations. In January 2016, he was diagnosed having severe depression and anxiety. He was already having poor mental health due to the incidents started after the complain about research activities of Dr. C and Dr. A. His enrollment was terminated in July 2016 without prior notice and giving right to file a grievance from the termination decision. He was asked to pay more than $84,000 student loan to governments of Ontario and Canada. These events put acute pressure on him. He visited emergencies of 4 different hospitals where doctors associated his fast heartbeat, high BP, and chest pain to abdominal pain, hypertension, muscular pain and high triglycerides. No one paid attention to his mental health issues and circumstances. After waiting for 9 months to get appointment with a psychiatrist, he with his family left Canada in October 2016 for his treatment in Pakistan and returned in November 2017.
Shafique arranged funds from overseas and approached multiple lawyers in Ontario to file a lawsuit against UW. However, no suitable lawyer agreed to represent him in the Court. Depressed with his health issues and family situation, he filed a lawsuit as self-represented against UW in May 2018, and claimed $9,000,000 in career and health compensation, and $200,000,000 in punitive damages (Shafique v. University of Waterloo). The University got enormous benefit in the Courtroom because its adversary was self-represented, had no law background, and had poor health. Shafique lost the motion to strike the claim which the University brought in almost a year. In the (leave for) appeal filing process at Divisional Court Toronto, he discovered that UW intentionally made misrepresentations to the Court for certain reasons and also filed a false affidavit to override important evidence. UW was given privilege to enter the formal court order without consent. It again acted in bad faith and got a deficient order issued which made the key evidence extraneous and irrelevant to the appeal process. The deficient order resulted in dismissal of the motions for leave to appeal to Divisional Court in October 2019. Not knowing how to move the appeal process further, he tried to bring a motion for judicial direction at Divisional Court Toronto in November/December 2019. He was not allowed to bring such motion and he did not know how to move on for seeking justice. The University is trying to file a formal order at Divisional Court to mention that the motion materials of both the parties were read thoroughly before the dismissal which he believes is not true.
Shafique had cardiac diagnostic process twice including one at Trillium Hospital Mississauga but never educated about the final diagnosis. His medical reports contain misleading data which would lead to wrong diagnosis. Care providers also did his nuclear renal test but he is not informed of the result. He thinks that he is close to loose one or both kidneys. He believes that doctors prescribed medications will further affect his cardiac health and might result in false diagnosis. He is facing difficulty in understanding his health issues and diagnosis as he has no access to some of his health records. He requests to the Government of Ontario to make his health records public. He believes that not having legal help, medical advice and treatment, and access to important medical records are the hindrance to the provision of justice. He cannot afford hiring a full time lawyer but willing to pay for unbundled or limited services. Documents about facts and emails about this story are available online. Shafique could be reached through his email address below.
Documents and Research Reports
The health facts document outlines facts about my health issues is available in .
A document containing selected emails exchanged between administration, my supervisors and myself are available in .
The first research report titled: Content-based Multi-path Routing in Structured Cyclic Overlays made public in December 2015 is available here. The updated version is available here. The second research report titled: Adaptive Content-based Routing using Subscription Subgrouping in Structured Overlays made public in April 2016 is available here. The updated version is available here.
Muhammad Shafique
Brampton Ontario L6V 4T1
mohamed.shafique@gmail.com @MsaShafique https://www.linkedin.com/in/muhammad-shafique-b94936a7/
