KU’s ICCBS, Chinese institution sign MoU for collaboration

The International Centre for Chemical and Biological Sciences (ICCBS), University of Karachi, signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Beijing Institute of Genomics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China, on Friday, an official announced.

As per the MoU, Chinese and Pakistani institutions aim to recognise their complementary strengths in the fields of life sciences, and wish to strengthen their relationship for the benefit of their students and researchers.

Both parties will endeavour to encourage, promote and facilitate collaboration. In particular, they have agreed to develop collaborative work by facilitating exchanges of academic staff and students, hosting the other party’s academic staff and students as departmental visitors, fostering bioinformatics and big data union/network in Asia, exchanging relevant non-confidential publications, exploring opportunities for collaborating on funded research programmes, exchanging relevant non-confidential materials, subject to appropriate agreements, inviting the other party to attend conferences.

The MoU was signed by BIG-CAS Director Dr Yongbiao Xue and ICCBS Director Professor Dr M Iqbal Choudhary.

Earlier, a meeting was held at the Dr Panjwani Centre for Molecular Medicine and Drug Research, KU, in which the six-member Chinese delegation was welcomed by ICCBS acting director Professor Dr Shaiq Ali and other officials. Dr Changqing Zeng, Dr Songnian Hu, Dr Yiming Bao, Dr Zhang Zhang and Dr Jiayan Wu attended the meeting. Dr Yongbiao Xue and Prof Shaiq Ali discussed issues of mutual interest. They stressed the need to have mutual research work in the field of life sciences. Dr Hina Siddiqui of the ICCBS gave an introduction of the international centre in her presentation. The Chinese delegation visited the state-of-the art laboratories set up in the Jamil-ur- Rahman Centre for Genome Research, HEJ Research Institute of Chemistry, and the Dr Panjwani Centre for Molecular Medicine and Drug Research.