Husain received her early education in Lahore. At the age of eleven, Husain dropped out of a regular school and was home schooled. Husain sat for her O Levels at the age of 13 and went on to take her A Levels at the age of 15. During these years, Husain wrote extensively. Her articles were featured in various national newspapers as well as the magazine Newsline. In 1988, she won an international essay competition held by the Children as the Peacemakers Foundation based in California, USA. In 1990, she won First Prize in an essay competition held by the Pakistan Post Office. In an interview given to the Dawn news, Husain has been misquoted as saying that this 'isolation' created problems for her at Kinnaird College, when she went there for her under-graduate education. In fact, she was an active participant in many extra-curricular activities and represented her college at inter-school competitions both for poetry recitation and science. Upon graduation, Husain received the Boswell Medal for excellence which is awarded to students who excel academically and are also exceptionally well-rounded.
After the ICTP, Husain moved to Sweden to attend Stockholm University where her thesis advisor was Dr. Ansar Fayyazuddin. She completed her PhD in theoretical physics at the age of twenty six, becoming the first Pakistani woman String Theorist.
Career in physics
After her post-doctoral stint at Harvard University, Husain moved back to Pakistan, where she joined the Lahore University of Management Sciences's School of Science and Engineering. She became an Assistant Professor of Physics. Husain's academic research focuses on using 11-dimensional supergravity to arrive at a classification of the flux backgrounds that arise when M-branes wrap supersymmetric cycles.
Advocate for science in Pakistan
Husain has become a vocal and vehement supporter of science in Pakistan. Keenly interested in education and science popularisation in her country, she designed Pakistan's logo for the World Year of Physics and was an active participant in the WYP Physics Stories project, led by Argonne National Laboratory of the United States. Husain has made contemporary efforts to make basic theoretical physics accessible to high-school students, and has developed a series of animated presentations which she delivered to various high school and college students. Husain has also taught both Mathematics and Physics at her alma mater, Kinnaird College. She has helped train Pakistan's physics team to the International Physics Olympiad. Husain is a trustee and board of directors of the Alif Laila Book Bus Society, a non-profit educational institution catering primarily to under-privileged children.
