PESHAWAR: The University of Engineering and Technology (UET) Peshawar, and Peshawar Chamber of Small Traders & Small Industry (PCST&SI) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to extend cooperation to foster industry-academia linkages.
Prof Dr Qaisar Ali Pro-Vice Chancellor, UET Peshawar and President PCST&SI Muhammad Adnan Jalil signed the memorandum of understanding.
According to MoU, both sides will work together to promote research culture in industry to boost industrialisation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and produce demand-driven graduates for the industry. Both UET Peshawar and PCST&SI agreed to cooperate for holding vocational and skills development programmes for promotion of entrepreneurship.
Prof Dr Qaisar Ali stressed the need for joint efforts to promote industrial linkages and to enhance mutual collaboration.
He called upon the PCST&SI to identify projects in the industries' first so that university students would take up those problems as part of their final year projects to help solve the real life issues instead of theoretical knowledge.
He appreciated the new understanding and asked Director Office of Research Innovation and Commercialisation (ORIC) Dr Nasru Minalullah to arrange students' visits to the PCST&SI.
Adnan Jalil expressed great interest at the UET Peshawar's Centre of Artificial Intelligence, other state-of-the-art research and the Technology Incubation Centre (TIC).
He vowed to work for mutually beneficial initiatives such as internships and joint projects between the industrial sectors and offered to nominate industrialists for relevant Industrial Advisory Boards at respective departments of UET Peshawar.
He proposed the idea to hold an interactive seminar and Open House where both UET Peshawar researchers, members from PCST&SI and other Chambers along with leading industrialists will sit together and exchange ideas for practical projects.
Dr Nasru Minalullah, Director ORIC while speaking on the occasion said that both institutions will hold conferences, workshops, seminars, research projects with PCST&SI under the MoU.
Meanwhile, discussion also identified the prospects of the UET Peshawar's memberships on different set of committees at the PCST&SI to which both parties agreed.
Those who attended included Prof Dr Siraj-ul-Islam, Dean, Faculty of Architecture and Allied Sciences, Prof Dr Amjad Ullah, Dean, Faculty of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Prof Dr Syed Raiz Akbar Shah, Director TIC, Dr Khan Muhammad, Director Gems & Jewellery Centre and other senior officials of UET and PCST&SI.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021