The Higher Education Commission (HEC) has invited research proposals under its recently established University-Industry Technology Support Program (UITSP) in research domains, which would lead to a significant economic impact and contribute either to export enhancement or increase quality and productivity of products of the country.
The UITSP has to be initiated by any public sector university or degree-awarding institution of Pakistan in collaboration with a relevant industry. The research grant would be given for a maximum duration of two years with a budget up to Rs 6 million.
The University-Industry Technology Support Programme of the HEC is an important step towards fostering high-level of tangible co-operation between the academia and the industry for the sake of capitalising on emerging international demands for products and processes in discrete and continuous manufacturing in order to contribute to national economy.
This programme is focused on industrial sectors where the country is already a major contributor to world trade, to sectors where there is high potential for international trade with a lot of competition and sectors those need developments both for local and international consumption.
The focused sector-wise identification of products and processes in discrete and continuous and their import and export trends are available from public domain local and international statistical data.
The UITSP proposes that the researchers preferably with PhD degree and affiliation with the international professional bodies collaborate with the local industry involved in discrete and continuous manufacturing for tangible results in terms of improvement in products and processes leading to decreased import of the raw materials and the increased export of the finished products and processes.
The products and processes needing improvement should ideally be in priority areas relevant to national needs for socio-economic development of the country.