In the relentless pursuit of academic excellence, students and scholars often find themselves in a whirlwind of tasks, deadlines, and aspirations. Amidst this academic journey, a beacon of wisdom and guidance awaits within the pages of the Quran, particularly in the opening chapter, Al-Fatihah. This chapter, encompassing only seven verses, harbors a verse of immense potency, Al-Fatihah, which has the potential to illuminate the path to both academic success and overall well-being.
The Genesis of Al-Fatihah
Al-Fatihah, translating to “The Opening,” serves as the threshold to the Quran’s treasure trove of knowledge and spirituality. Its first verse, Al-Tahihah, commences with the invocation:
In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
This opening declaration, known as the Basmala, is a gentle reminder of the encompassing mercy and benevolence of Allah. Its recitation before embarking on any academic endeavor sets the stage for a holistic approach to learning.
A Guiding Light for Academic Pursuits
Integrating Al-Fatihah into academic endeavors is akin to kindling a guiding light. The phrase “Bismillahi r-Rahmani r-Raheem” can serve as an intention-setting ritual. It transforms the act of studying from a mundane task into an act of devotion. Each subject tackled, each book opened, is imbued with a higher purpose — to seek knowledge, to grow intellectually, and to uncover the mysteries of the world.
The Power of Intention and Focus
Al-Fatihah encourages a deliberate approach to academia by emphasizing intention and focus. Uttering the words “In the name of Allah” before immersing oneself in studies brings mindfulness to the forefront. This practice heightens awareness, allowing students to engage with the material more deeply and purposefully.
Harnessing Mercy and Compassion
The qualities of “Rahman” (Most Gracious) and “Raheem” (Most Merciful) encapsulate Allah’s boundless compassion. When grappling with challenging concepts or facing academic setbacks, invoking these attributes can foster resilience and hope. Embracing the notion of divine mercy, individuals can find solace in the understanding that their efforts are recognized and supported.
Striking a Balance for Well-Being
The rigors of academia often cast a shadow on well-being. Al-Fatihah introduces the concept of equilibrium. By reminding individuals of Allah’s compassion, it encourages a balanced approach to life. Amidst the pursuit of knowledge, self-care takes precedence, fostering mental and emotional well-being.
Mindful Presence through Al-Fatihah
The cadence of “Bismillahi r-Rahmani r-Raheem” serves as a rhythm for mindfulness. Amidst the fast-paced academic routine, this invocation acts as a reminder to be present in the moment. Whether in a lecture hall or a quiet study nook, it beckons individuals to engage with awareness, to absorb knowledge with gratitude, and to cherish the opportunity to learn.
Al-Fatihah’s opening verse, Al-Fatihah, unveils a reservoir of wisdom that holds significance in the realms of academia and well-being. Incorporating these teachings into the academic journey can infuse learning with intention, resilience, and mindfulness. The simple act of invoking Allah’s name and attributes can elevate the pursuit of knowledge into an act of devotion. Al-Fatihah not only guides students toward academic success but also promotes well-being by emphasizing balance, compassion, and mindfulness. In the grand tapestry of education, Al-Fatihah is the thread that weaves spirituality into scholarship, guiding individuals to excel academically while nurturing their holistic growth.
The quadruple and quintuple innovation helix framework describes university-industry-government-public-environment interactions within a knowledge economy.
In innovation helical framework theory, first developed by Henry Etzkowitz and Loet Leydesdorff[1][2] and used in innovation economics and theories of knowledge, such as the knowledge society and the knowledge economy, each sector is represented by a circle (helix), with overlapping showing interactions.
The Carayannis and Campbell quadruple helix model incorporates the public via the concept of a ‘media-based democracy’,[9] which emphasizes that when the political system (government) is developing innovation policy to develop the economy, it must adequately communicate its innovation policy with the public and civil society via the media to obtain public support for new strategies or policies.[3]
In the case of industry involved in R&D, the framework emphasizes that companies’ public relations strategies have to negotiate ‘reality construction’ by the media.[3]
The quadruple and quintuple helix framework can be described in terms of the models of knowledge that it extends and by five subsystems (helices) that it incorporates; in a quintuple helix-driven model, knowledge and know-how are created and transformed, and circulate as inputs and outputs in a way that affects the natural environment.[2][4]
Socio-ecological interactions via the quadruple and quintuple helices can be utilized to define opportunities for the knowledge society and knowledge economy, such as innovation to address sustainable development, including climate change.[2]
The act of learning is every bit as important as what you learn. Believing that you can improve yourself and do things in the future that are beyond your current possibilities is exciting and fulfilling.
Still, your time is finite, and you should dedicate yourself to learning skills that will yield the greatest benefit. There are seven skills that I believe fit the bill because they never stop paying dividends. These are the skills that deliver the biggest payoff, both in terms of what they teach you and their tendency to keep the learning alive.
1. Knowing when to shut up.
Sure, it can feel so good to unload on somebody and let them know what you really think, but that good feeling is temporary. What happens the next day, the next week, or the next year? It’s human nature to want to prove that you’re right, but it’s rarely effective. In conflict, unchecked emotion makes you dig your heels in and fight the kind of battle that can leave you and the relationship severely damaged. When you read and respond to your emotions, you’re able to choose your battles wisely and only stand your ground when the time is right. The vast majority of the time, that means biting your tongue.
2. Emotional intelligence (EQ).
EQ is the “something” in each of us that is a bit intangible. It affects how we manage behavior, navigate social complexities, and make personal decisions that achieve positive results. EQ is your ability to recognize and understand emotions in yourself and others and your ability to use this awareness to manage your behavior and relationships. Decades of research now point to emotional intelligence as the critical factor that sets star performers apart from the rest of the pack. It’s a powerful way to focus your energy in one direction, with tremendous results.
TalentSmart tested EQ alongside 33 other important workplace skills and found that EQ is the strongest predictor of performance, explaining a full 58% of success in all types of jobs. Of all the people we’ve studied at work, we’ve found that 90% of top performers are also high in EQ. On the flip side, just 20% of bottom performers are high in EQ. You can be a top performer without EQ, but the chances are slim. Naturally, people with a high degree of EQ make more money, an average of $29,000 more per year than people with a low degree of emotional intelligence. The link between EQ and earnings is so direct that every point increase in EQ adds $1,300 to an annual salary. Increasing your EQ won’t just pad your bank account, it’ll make you happier and less stressed as well.
3. Time management.
One of the biggest things that gets in the way of effective time management is the “tyranny of the urgent.” This refers to the tendency of little things that have to be done right now to get in the way of what really matters. When you succumb to it, you spend so much time putting out fires that you never get any real work done. How many times have you left work at the end of the day, only to realize that you didn’t move the important things along even one inch? Learning to manage your time effectively frees you up to perform at your absolute highest level, and it does so every single day of your life.
4. Listening.
This one should be easy. If we’re not talking, we’re listening, right? Well, not exactly. A lot of times, we think we’re listening, but we’re actually planning what we’re going to say next. True listening means focusing solely on what the other person is saying. It’s about understanding, not rebuttal or input. Learning how to suspend judgment and focus on understanding the other person’s input is one of the most important skills you can develop.
Listening is a bit like intelligence—most everyone thinks they’re above average (even though that’s impossible). A study at Wright State University surveyed more than 8,000 people from different verticals, and almost all rated themselves as listening as well as or better than their co-workers. We know intuitively that many of them were wrong.
There’s so much talking happening at work that opportunities to listen abound. We talk to provide feedback, explain instructions, and communicate deadlines. Beyond the spoken words, there’s invaluable information to be deciphered through tone of voice, body language, and what isn’t said. In other words, failing to keep your ears (and eyes) open could leave you out of the game.
5. Saying “no.”
Research conducted at the University of California, San Francisco, showed that the more difficulty that you have saying no, the more likely you are to experience stress, burnout, and even depression. Saying no is indeed a major challenge for many people. No is a powerful word that you should not be afraid to wield. When it’s time to say no, avoid phrases such as I don’t think I can or I’m not certain. Saying no to a new commitment honors your existing commitments and gives you the opportunity to successfully fulfill them. When you learn to say no, you free yourself from unnecessary constraints and free up your time and energy for the important things in life.
6. Getting high-quality sleep.
We’ve always known that quality sleep is good for your brain, but recent research from the University of Rochester demonstrated exactly how so. The study found that when you sleep, your brain removes toxic proteins, which are by-products of neural activity when you’re awake, from its neurons. The catch here is that your brain can only adequately remove these toxic proteins when you have sufficient quality sleep. When you don’t get high-quality deep sleep, the toxic proteins remain in your brain cells, wreaking havoc and ultimately impairing your ability to think—something no amount of caffeine can fix. This slows your ability to process information and solve problems, kills your creativity, and increases your emotional reactivity. Learning to get high-quality sleep on a regular basis is a difficult skill to master, but it pays massive dividends the next day.
7. Staying positive.
We’ve all received the well-meaning advice to “stay positive.” The greater the challenge, the more this glass-half-full wisdom can come across as Pollyannaish and unrealistic. It’s hard to find the motivation to focus on the positive when positivity seems like nothing more than wishful thinking. The real obstacle to positivity is that our brains are hard-wired to look for and focus on threats. This survival mechanism served humankind well, back when we were hunters and gatherers and living each day with the very real threat of being killed by someone or something in our immediate surroundings.
That was eons ago. Today, this mechanism breeds pessimism and negativity through the mind’s tendency to wander until it finds a threat. These “threats” magnify the perceived likelihood that things are going—and/or are going to go—poorly. When the threat is real and lurking in the bushes down the path, this mechanism serves you well. When the threat is imagined and you spend two months convinced that the project you’re working on is going to flop, this mechanism leaves you with a soured view of reality that wreaks havoc in your life. Maintaining positivity is a daily challenge that requires focus and attention. You must be intentional about staying positive if you’re going to overcome the brain’s tendency to focus on threats.
Bringing It All Together
Research shows that lifelong learning pays dividends beyond the skills you acquire. Never stop learning.
How do you keep the learning alive? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below, as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.
1.) “I asked Allah’s Messenger which deed was best.” He (the Holy Prophet) replied: “The prayer at its appointed hour”. [Sahih Muslim]
2.) “If you want to focus more on Allah in your prayers, focus more on Him outside your prayers.” Yasmin Mogahed
3.) The Prophet used to seek refuge in Allah from laziness that he used to mention it daily in this dua: “O Allah, I take refuge in You from anxiety and sorrow, weakness and laziness, miserliness and cowardice, the burden of debts and from being over powered by men.” [Sahih Bukhari]
4.) The Prophet said, “By Him in Whose Hand my life is, it is better for anyone of you to take a rope and cut the wood (from the forest) and carry it over his back and sell it (as a means of earning his living) rather than to ask a person for something and that person may give him or not.” [Sahih Bukhari]
5.) One of the greatest pieces of advice given by the Prophet was: “The most beloved actions to Allah are those performed consistently, even if they are few.” [Sahih Bukhari]
6.) “And whoever fears Allah – He will make for him a way out and will provide for him from where he does not expect. And whoever relies upon Allah – then He is sufficient for him. Indeed, Allah will accomplish His purpose. Allah has already set for everything a [decreed] extent.” [Qur’an, 65: 2-3]
Get Motivated
7.) “Indeed, Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves.” [Qur’an, 13:11]
8.) “After asking Allah to guide you to the straight path, don’t just stand there … start walking!” – Albaz Poetry
9.) “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” – Rumi
10.) “The capacity to learn is a gift; the ability to learn is a skill; the willingness to learn is a choice.” Via Islamic Thoughts
11.) “Allah knows exactly what to give you to help you return to Him. The events in your life are purposeful, appropriate & non-random.” – Shaykh Hamza Yusuf
12.) “My sin burdened me heavily. But when I measured it against Your Grace, O Lord, Your forgiveness came out greater.” – Imam Shafii
13.) (Ibn al-Jawzi) To achieve any objective, we need two things:
Nobel himma (motivation) – will overcome the obstruction
Right strategy.
14.) “O my Lord! Open for me my chest (grant me self-confidence, contentment, and boldness).” [Qur’an, 20:25]
15.) “And if there comes to you from Satan an evil suggestion, then seek refuge in Allah. Indeed, He is the Hearing, the Knowing.” [Qur’an, 41:36]
16.) “And whoever fears Allah – He will make for him a way out and will provide for him from where he does not expect. And whoever relies upon Allah – then He is sufficient for him. Indeed, Allah will accomplish His purpose. Allah has already set for everything a [decreed] extent.” [Qur’an, 65: 2-3]
17.) “Strange are the matters of believers. For him there is good in all his affairs, and this is so only for the believer. When something pleasing happens to him, he is grateful (shukr), and that is good for him; and when something displeasing happens to him he is enduring patience (sabr) and that is good for him.” [Sahih Muslim]
Feel Better
18.) Abu Yahya Suhaib b. Sinan said that the Prophet said: “No man fills a container worse than his stomach. A few morsels that keep his back upright are sufficient for him. If he has to, then he should keep one-third for food, one-third for drink and one-third for breathing.” [At-Tirmidhi]
19.) Anas reported that the Prophet said, “It a Muslim plants a tree or sows seeds, and then a bird, or a person or an animal eats from it, it is regarded as a charitable gift (sadaqah) for him.” [Sahih Bukhari]
Work Better
20.) “There are two blessings which many people lose: (They are) health and free time for doing good.” [Sahih Bukhari]
21.) The Prophet said:
“Take benefit of five before five:
Your youth before your old age,
Your health before your sickness,
Your wealth before your poverty,
Your free-time before your preoccupation and
Your life before your death.”
[Mustadrak Al-Haakim]
22.) “If you are grateful, I shall certainly give you increase” [Qur’an, 14:7]
24.) “Then when you have taken a decision, put your trust in Allah.” [Qur’an, 3:159]
Help Others
25.) “None of you truly believes (in Allah and His religion) until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself.” [Sahih Bukhari and Muslim]
26.) “Meet the people in such a manner that if you die, they should weep for you, and if you live, they should long for you.” – Ali Ibn Abi Talib
27.) “If Allah puts anyone in the position of authority over the Muslims’ affairs and he secludes himself (from them), not fulfilling their needs, wants, and poverty, Allah will keep Himself away from him, not fulfilling his need, want, and poverty.” [Abu Dawud]
28.) The Prophet said, “If anyone fulfills his brother’s needs, Allah will fulfill his needs; if one relieves a Muslim of his troubles, Allah will relieve his troubles on the Day of Resurrection.” [Sahih Bukhari and Muslim]
29.) Abdullah ibn ‘Abbas reported that the Prophet said, “The believer is not he who eats his fill while his neighbor is hungry.” (Authenticated by Al-Albani, Al-Adab Al-Mufrad Al-Bukhari, Hadith 112)
In this profile series, we interview AI innovators on the front-lines – those who have dedicated their life’s work to improving the human condition through technology advancements.
Meet Damian Borth, chair in the Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning department at the University of St. Gallen (HSG) in Switzerland, and past director of the Deep Learning Competence Center at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). He is also a founding co-director of Sociovestix Labs, a social enterprise in the area of financial data science. Damian’s background is in research where he focuses on large-scale multimedia opinion mining applying machine learning and in particular deep learning to mine insights (trends, sentiment) from online media streams.
Damian talks about his realization in deep learning and shares why integrating his work with deep learning is an important part to help prevent future natural disasters.
What has your journey been like in deep learning? How did you end up at DFKI?
I spent two years in Taiwan, went to the University of Kaiserslautern, Germany for my PhD while having a stopover at Columbia University, and did my post-doctoral at UC Berkeley and the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley. In Berkeley, I spent my time on deep learning network architectures and got really into it. That was a really great time. After my stay in the US, I went back to the DFKI to found the Deep Learning Competence Center. Now, I am helping the University of St. Gallen to establish a lab in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning and hopefully soon the buildup of a new computer science faculty.
What made you become a DL believer?
I was actually a “non-believer” in deep learning, until I started my post-doc at UC Berkeley. It’s very hard to train a neural network efficiently without sufficient data and at the time that I started by PhD, neural networks were not trusted as the go-to method. Instead, we looked at support vector machines for classification. But then AlexNet came along and showed neural networks do, in fact, work consistently. Then people began to download the Caffe framework, use it, improve it, and outperform other architectures.
What did you do in Berkeley?
I continued the work we have started at Columbia in sentiment analysis for pictures. It could classify objects like e.g. animals such as a dog or a cat. We attached adjectives to the noun and made the analysis differentiate between a scary dog or a cute dog. The vocabulary was roughly 2,000 adjectives noun pairs (ANP). By conditioning the noun with an adjective, we were able to move a very objective judgement to a subjective assessment. Doing so we were able to derive a link from this mid-level representation to a higher level of sentiment representation. The positive image of a cute dog or a laughing baby could flip to a negative sentiment when it saw a dark street or a bloody accident. This mid-level representation proved to be also very successful beyond sentiment analysis and was applied to aesthetics and emotion detection. It created a bridge between the objective world and the subjective world of visual content. In Berkeley I was also part of the team creating the YFCC100m dataset the largest curated image dataset at that time. Having such a dataset with 100 million creative common images and videos from Flickr helps if you want to train a very deep neural network architecture.
Did you continue your sentiment analysis work with DFKI?
We call it Multimedia Opinion Mining (MOM), because we want it to consider different modalities such as video and audio. Currently we’re extending deep learning architectures towards multi-model signal processing. The goal is to take different modalities as an input and move them all into one architecture. If you have a self-driving car, you’re not only detecting the visual signal of the camera, but also the radar data from an audio signal and others in one network. Working with different architectures such as late fusion, infusion, and in some work on early fusion demonstrated to improve system performance. In particular early fusion has been successfully used in satellite image analysis for remote sensing where a lot of information is multi-model. This is really a game changer for disaster recovery. Using this information, we can help with flooding and wildfires disasters where emergency response teams on the ground can get immediate information from satellites to find where the fire is, what the flooding looks like, or how many buildings can be affected and is it accessible by road or by boat.
Can you elaborate on the disaster response case? How can your work help these first responders?
We were analyzing data collected from a wildfire case at Fort McMurray. When we looked at the data, initially we saw that the area around the fire, in particular the vegetation and already burned area was a strong indicator for the direction of the fire spread. Once the wind changed the fire changed its course as well which caused more damage. This analysis would have predicted that change of how the fire develops much earlier. Such information is very valuable to the first responders and their work on the ground. Another case we’re currently working on is with flooding. We started a benchmark challenge to foster collaboration to build up a community with MediaEval Satellite Task. In the first year 16 teams from around the world have been participating. The teams submit their neural networks results and we compare the performance on the test data set to figure out which one provides the best predictions. This way we know very quickly which approaches work and which not.
Is there a specific natural disaster you’re analyzing to prevent in the future?
Minimizing the impact of natural disasters was one of my main research areas at DFKI, and wildfire and flooding are just a few of the disasters the United Nations is monitoring worldwide. We’re seeing a general rise in natural disasters and we want to help emergency response teams on the ground get immediate information from satellites about their impact. For example, where the fire is, how the flood is moving, or how many buildings are affected. However, there are
other disaster we would like to continue our work such as earthquakes or landslides. The goal is to have a system that learns from data of previously seen disasters automatically.
Is there a reason why you went into the disaster space?
I’m a huge advocate of AI for public good working closely with the AI for Good Foundation. The foundation investigates ways how AI can help humanity in areas like agriculture, natural disaster recovery, and the sustainable development goals. It’s currently difficult to motivate students to stay with academia because there are so many great opportunities in the industrial sectors. But if you have someone who’s talented, it’s important to show him or her how their work can help people – then they will stay to work on the problem and try to solve it. It’s not just about money in AI research – we have the ability to do something good.
Was there a natural disaster that happened to you as a child growing up wishing you had this type of technology to help prevent it?
Not exactly. I was born in Poland and before the Iron Curtain fell we moved to Germany. The Chernobyl disaster happened, so it affected the area partially through the contaminated rain. You couldn’t help prevent that, but it’s definitely something to think about.
Is there any advice you’d like to give to researchers who want to follow in the same space?
Take your time, read the literature, and try to understand the material thoroughly. You don’t want to be overwhelmed by the velocity of papers being published. You also don’t need to publish about all the conferences that are currently happening. Focus on solving problems, because you want to prioritize what’s important rather than splitting yourself to do multiple things.
If you could go back in time and bring this technology with you, what would you have wanted to prevent?
Maybe Fukushima with the tsunamis. If I could help the disaster in real time, then we would get the emergency response team in the right spot. Analyze the surface structure and maybe prevent the outcome of a natural disaster such as flooding in a way that it would have less damage or prevent more victims from the disaster. It’s something that I think is very important, and not enough people are working on preventing that.
Register now for the ‘Earth Observation from Space: Deep Learning Based Satellite Image Analysis’ webinar with Damian Borth discussing the challenges of land use and land cover classification using remote sensing satellite images.
Resources:
Read how DFKI finds meaningful insights from enormous data sets to make better decisions.
Learn how AI and Deep Learning are fueling all areas of business.
Check out how you can implement AI for public good.
which deed was best.” He (the Holy Prophet) replied: “The prayer at its appointed hour”. [
from laziness that he used to mention it daily in this 
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