Last month, a team of six staff from the Civic Initiative (a business group of the University of Massachusetts Amherst Donahue Institute) were in Islamabad. They held a three-day follow-up conference for alumni from recent cohorts of the Study of the U.S. Institutes Comparative Public Policymaking program that has been held annually by the Civic Initiative since 2010. The SUSI program is funded by the US Department of State Education and Cultural Affairs Office.

Mehtabidah Ali's research paper was published in the International Journal of Heliyon. In the study, Ali utilized NASA Satellite Data to predict the behavior of surging glaciers in the HKH ranges of Northern Pakistan and analyzed the risks with glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs).