Moot on Impactful Research

LAHORE:University of Management and Technology (UMT) organised a conference on Impactful Research: Convergence of Basic and Applied Research to Create Real-World Impact on Monday.

According to a press release, Chairman HEC Dr Mukhtar Ahmed was the guest of honour while President UMT Ibrahim Hasan Murad, Rector UMT Dr Asif Raza, Director General UMT Abid Sherwani, Dr Mujahid Kamran, others officials and a large number of faculty attended the moot.

Addressing the participants, Dr Mukhtar Ahmed said basic and applied research must be combined for real-world impact and added research played an important role in the development of any country, so we have to improve the country's conditions by doing research in diverse areas.

Dr Mukhtar said writing research papers was good but we needed to focus on research that could provide solutions to social and economical problems of society. He said the HEC was going to set up two data centres in Karachi and Lahore which would enable the Higher Education Commission to further improve its performance. Lack of resources is a major problem and there is a need to work on collaborative projects and focus more on resource sharing by experts from all universities, he maintained.

The HEC chairman said in the near future, more than Rs 100 million would be given to universities to carry out impactful research. He urged the varsities to create their own small companies to serve the country with products made through research.