AGL 40.00 No Change ▼ 0.00 (0%)
AIRLINK 127.11 Increased By ▲ 0.07 (0.06%)
BOP 6.61 Decreased By ▼ -0.06 (-0.9%)
CNERGY 4.52 Increased By ▲ 0.01 (0.22%)
DCL 8.58 Increased By ▲ 0.03 (0.35%)
DFML 41.75 Increased By ▲ 0.31 (0.75%)
DGKC 87.32 Increased By ▲ 0.47 (0.54%)
FCCL 32.55 Increased By ▲ 0.27 (0.84%)
FFBL 64.99 Increased By ▲ 0.19 (0.29%)
FFL 10.33 Increased By ▲ 0.08 (0.78%)
HUBC 109.50 Decreased By ▼ -0.07 (-0.06%)
HUMNL 14.70 Increased By ▲ 0.02 (0.14%)
KEL 5.08 Increased By ▲ 0.03 (0.59%)
KOSM 7.56 Increased By ▲ 0.10 (1.34%)
MLCF 41.50 Increased By ▲ 0.12 (0.29%)
NBP 59.50 Decreased By ▼ -0.91 (-1.51%)
OGDC 192.40 Increased By ▲ 2.30 (1.21%)
PAEL 28.15 Increased By ▲ 0.32 (1.15%)
PIBTL 7.83 No Change ▼ 0.00 (0%)
PPL 151.50 Increased By ▲ 1.44 (0.96%)
PRL 26.55 Decreased By ▼ -0.33 (-1.23%)
PTC 16.12 Increased By ▲ 0.05 (0.31%)
SEARL 83.80 Decreased By ▼ -2.20 (-2.56%)
TELE 7.78 Increased By ▲ 0.07 (0.91%)
TOMCL 35.49 Increased By ▲ 0.08 (0.23%)
TPLP 8.14 Increased By ▲ 0.02 (0.25%)
TREET 16.14 Decreased By ▼ -0.27 (-1.65%)
TRG 53.15 Decreased By ▼ -0.14 (-0.26%)
UNITY 26.25 Increased By ▲ 0.09 (0.34%)
WTL 1.26 No Change ▼ 0.00 (0%)
BR100 9,991 Increased By 106.9 (1.08%)
BR30 31,161 Increased By 561.2 (1.83%)
KSE100 94,150 Increased By 795.1 (0.85%)
KSE30 29,170 Increased By 239.4 (0.83%)

Former Higher Education Commission ( HEC) chairman and Vice Chairman of Prime Minister Task Force on Technology Driven Knowledge Economy Prof Dr Atta ur Rehman has said that knowledge is key driver for socio-economic development of any country and our universities direly needed funding to contribute in development of Pakistan.

He was addressing the inaugural session of international conference on "Recent Innovations in Molecular Sciences" on Wednesday.

PU Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Niaz Ahmed, Dean Faculty of Life Sciences Prof Dr Firdous-e-Barin, School of Biological Sciences Director Prof Dr Waheed Akhter, Prof Dr James H Naismith from UK, Prof Dr Paul A Gleeson from Australia, Prof Dr Zengyi Chang from China, faculty members from the faculties of life sciences, sciences, pharmacy and health sciences, over 1000 young scientist, researchers, prominent scientists from USA, UK, Australia, France, China, Iran, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Russia as well as from all over Pakistan participated in the conference.

Addressing the conference, Prof Dr Atta ur Rehman said that the countries which have invested in education were making rapid progress in the world. He said that Pakistan had also made rapid progress in higher education sector in the past decade. He said that in 2018, Pakistan had defeated India in per capita research output and Pakistani researchers' number of publications per 10 million individuals was 916 while Indian researchers' was 708.

He said that Nature publishing group on December 20, 2018 has ranked Pakistan number 1 among the countries with biggest rises in research output, leaving Egypt, Mainland China, Hong Kong, India, Brazil, Mexico and other countries far behind.

He said that according to Thomson Reuters in its report issued in 2016, Pakistan had emerged as the country with the highest percentage of Highly Cited Papers compared with Brazil, Russia, India and China.

He said that Singapore was one of the best examples of the countries that progressed on the basis of knowledge economy. He said that Singapore was a country of around 5 million population only and had no natural resources. However, he said, Singapore had focused on human resource and high tech manufacturing and its exports had reached the volume of 330 billion dollars. He said that Pakistan's 56 percent population was under 20 which was its biggest asset. He said that we must utilize this talent for development of science and technology in Pakistan.

Addressing the conference, Prof Niaz Ahmad said that PU administration was funding 112 research projects of teachers and students in life sciences faculty. He said that PU had also been declared No 1 in natural sciences research in Pakistan by Nature publishing.

He said that 60 percent PU teachers were PhD.

He said that development and innovation came from higher education sector. He urged the students to develop new ideas and research projects for socio-economic development of Pakistan and PU would fund such projects.

Prof Dr Waheed Akhter said that renowned scientists, researchers and students belonging to life sciences, sciences, pharmacy and health sciences from various parts of the world and country were participating in the conference. He said that a broad theme for the conference was chosen in view of extensive connections in the processes and techniques used in plant, animal, health, pharmaceutical, environmental sciences and the applications. He said that in the recent past we had seen advances in understanding and regulating the processes of the living systems. He said that these had led to understanding of the underlying causes and finding cures for diseases like cancer.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2019

Comments

Comments are closed.