NUST team conferred winner’s prize

Islamabad : With a view to recognising a team of young enterprising students from NUST who stood out at the first-ever PTCL-hosted hackathon – Ideas Hackathon, an award ceremony was held at the headquarters of PTCL here the other day.

Members of the winning team were conferred medals, certificates and cash prize as a token of appreciation for their ingenuity and stupendous performance. A virtual competition held from October to November 2020, the hackathon was aimed at fostering innovation in a structured scheme of idea evaluation and, in so doing, accentuating the value of idea sharing in a challenging time-bound environment.

As many as 50 undergraduate and postgraduate students, distributed in 10 teams, represented top 5 universities of Pakistan at the event, which included NUST, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Bahria University, FAST University and Institute of Business Administration.

Amongst others present at the ceremony were Dr Nassar Ikram, NUST Pro-Rector for Research, Innovation & Commercialisation; Mr Mazhar Hussain, Group CHRO; and Mr Raza Sarwar, General Manager HR at PTCL. In his remarks, Dr Nassar extolled PTCL for taking the initiative that, he said, would augur well for invoking the spirit of innovation amongst the youth in the country. He also apprised the attendees of efforts being made by NUST in the field of innovation, entrepreneurship and university-industry linkages.

Expressing his views, Mazhar Hussain acknowledged the NUST management for developing an innovation-based knowledge ecosystem through Pakistan’s first incubation centre – Tech One and National Science & Technology Park (NSTP). He also appreciated the winning team for making this competition a huge success.