Comsats Inaugurates moot on Technology Parks Islamabad
Wednesday, January 31, 2018
Federal Minister for Science and Technology, Mr. Rana Tanveer Hussain on Tuesday inaugurated the three day International Workshop on ‘Technoparks: Opportunity to seize a lever of competitiveness’, at ORIC-Professional Development, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Islamabad. The workshop is being supported by the Inter-Islamic Network on Science & Technology Parks (INSTP), Iran; OIC Ministerial Committee on Scientific and Technological Cooperation (COMSTECH); Economic Cooperation Organization Science Foundation (ECOSF); Islamic Development Bank and the Ministry of Science & Technology, Islamabad. International experts from 8 Islamic countries including; Gambia; Nigeria; Sudan; Malaysia; Indonesia; Iran; Tunisia and Palestine are participating in the workshop. These International participants will share experience with managing and establishing Technology Parks in the context of developing countries. The Federal Minister in his remarks lauded the efforts of CIIT in organizing a highly relevant workshop. He opined that the prosperity of Pakistan is rooted in the ability to commercialize knowledge being produced in the universities. Prof. Dr. Raheel Qamar, Rector CIIT in his welcome address, informed the audience that CIIT was among the top universities in nearly all popular rankings and that the university is committed to creating opportunities for its students where they can realise their potential and experiment with converting lab research into commercializable projects. Dr. Manzoor H. Soomro, President, ECO-Science Foundation encouraged the idea of establishing Science parks and talked about introducing a framework of cooperation in the upcoming ministerial meeting of the Economic Cooperation Organization. Dr. Shaukat Hameed Khan, Coordinator General, COMSTECH also proposed increasing science funding for efforts like Science Parks in the country. However, he cautioned that scientists must remain focused on quality of science; in addition to commercializing technology. The workshop will touch upon areas like fundamentals of techno-parks; formats that can be used in techno-parks; Methodologies to stimulate innovation; techno-park tool box and other issues of intellectual property and funding in technology parks.
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