Ministry of Information Technology would provide 22 scholarships to young Pakistanis, seeking higher qualifications and research in IT and telecommunication disciplines. The funding for these scholarships will be provided by Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) Research and Development Fund which is paying Rs 200 million for the award of 22 PhD scholarships in foreign universities.
The decision to this effect was taken by 26th meeting of PTCL R&D Fund Committee meeting chaired by Minister for Information Technology Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari here on Saturday.
Secretary IT, Khalid Saeed, PTCL President, Junaid Iqbal Khan, Member Telecom, Nooruddin Baqai and others representing universities and research institutes of the country also attended the meeting.
The meeting was told that 22 students had already been selected by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) and confirmation letters to more than half of them had already been sent.
The selected students would pursue studies in disciplines such as computer science, electrical engineering, telecom, computer and architecture, computational fluid dynamics, digital signal processing, computer-aided mechanical engineering and embedded & real time systems, hardware/software co-designing.
The meeting was also told that a great deal of care was taken to send these candidates to world's best universities and a majority of the students had proceeded to universities in the USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
Some of the top universities chosen include University of Sheffield UK, Caltech USA, Oxford University, Texas A & M University College Station US, University of Southern California US, McGill University US, University of Nottingham UK, Purdue University US, University of Waterloo Canada, University of Edinburgh, University of Surrey UK, Bristol University UK, University of New South Wales Australia. The meeting also decided in principal to increase the number of scholarships in coming years and include master-level programmes as well to cater for the requirement of high-class work force required in the industry and the academic institutes.
"The PTCL R&D fund scholarship programme would become an example for other organisations and help strengthen the industry, which badly needed top-of-the-line work force," said Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari.
He said the decision to award scholarships was taken in the backdrop of a huge demand in the local IT and telecom industry and country's teaching institutions hit hard by the lack of highly-qualified professionals in the fields of IT and telecom.
The estimated cost for the award of 22 scholarships this year has been put at around Rs 200 million.
Awais Leghari termed the R&D fund members' decision as "excellent" and hoped this would promote quality education in the IT and telecom disciplines in the country. He said the award of 22 scholarships was not a one-time arrangement and these scholarships would be given every year to promising students ambitious to undertake higher research and education in the IT and telecom sectors, which have been rapidly expanding following investment-friendly policies introduced by the government.
The committee also agreed to fund the award of scholarships following a huge interest from students to do MS/PhD in the IT and telecom disciplines for which the HEC had only nine scholarships to offer this year.
The selection of the candidates to be sent to top-ranking universities of US, UK, Australia and Canada would be made every year by the HEC following its nation-wide selection programme to enlist students for the overseas scholarship scheme.
Comments
Comments are closed.