‘IT to lead education and development in future’

During the second day of the International Conference on Computing and Mathematical Sciences (ICCMS 2017) held at the  Sukkur Institute of Business Administration on Sunday, key note speakers shared their views and research project findings in various disciplines of computing and mathematics.

The discussion began with key note speech of Professor Dr Asadullah Shah, head of the Information Systems Department at International Islamic University, Malaysia. He delivered a talk on the philosophies of knowledge, innovation and research.

He said that more than 700 times in the Holy book of Quran, Allah has mentioned knowledge, wisdom and understanding in different contexts. “The purpose is that human beings should equip themselves with knowledge and understanding about universe and this world which we call science in this era.”

This led advancement in human knowledge in old era in which Muslim grew by leaps and bound in all sciences, he said. “However, at the moment, it is the Muslim world which is sunk under the deep dungeon of illiteracy, ignorance and negativity.”

He compared and contrasted the philosophy of knowledge seeking in the West and the East with emphasis on the role of religion. “We must take serious steps to establish a society based on moral values of justice, tolerance and scientific thinking so that we can eradicate radical elements form society that are exploiting the innocent young people by involving them in terrorism and inhuman activities.”  

Professor Dr NazirSangi of the Allama Iqbal University spoke on ‘Model for Socio Economic Development Professional Students’. He highlighted the role of information and community technology (ICT) in the national progress.

He said that according to a survey conducted by him, 69 percent of the youth possessed smart phones with access to internet. “As a result we have huge potential of the ICT Based Economic Activities which need to be untapped.”

He further said Pakistan was among nations having hung underutilised youth manpower in the field of ICT. “There are larger jobs and business opportunities related to ICT in the fields of news channels, security, software houses and web development.”

He also talked about online education landscape in the world and the role played by the Virtual University in educating people who otherwise can’t afford higher education. He said the emergence of MOOC (massive open online) had completely changed the future of education.

“In order to teach huge population of Pakistan, the availability of an internet connection with virtual lecture can make a huge difference.”

Another keynote speaker, Dr Muhammad Umer Altaf, who is a research scientist at The UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, said the largest international postgraduate water education facility in the world was based in Delft, Netherlands, UN AHE. He gave a presentation on ‘Data Assimilation’ to predict natural disaster in sea.

He shared how Netherland, a country prone to largest sea related air storms, implemented early warning system to predict disasters.

He further said that many places of Pakistan, including Karachi, was among top sensitive places highly prone to sea related disaster. He said the establishment of early warning system was mandatory all across the world which could help population to disperse or migrate in case of any larger natural calamity.

He referred to an open source software name “Open DA” which has the capability to predict storms and air and sea water levels.

Altaf, who is an expert in that software system in which he made more modification fitting to different contexts, offered his services, in case if, Pakistan was ever willing to develop such sophisticated early warning system. 

The conference concluded with many parallels sessions on various tracks of computing and mathematics in which young researchers presented their work supervised by senior professors and researchers.