Ignite, PITC sign MoU for engineering researchers

ISLAMABAD: Ignite and Pakistan Innovation and Testing Centre (PITC) entered a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to collaborate for the growth of entrepreneurs, researchers, industrialists, and academia in engineering innovation.

Federal Secretary of IT and Telecom Shoaib Ahmad Siddiqui said, “There is no denying the fact that we urgently need to jump start the economy and improve the business investment environment for our tech entrepreneurs.” He further said that this collaboration would be in the best interest of our innovators, researchers, industrialists and academicians who would benefit from the emerging initiatives of Ignite and PITC.

NIC start-ups would now get access to these engineering labs for development and testing of engineering. Ministry of IT has always supported its departments to reach out to relevant organisations. Advisor on Innovation Brig Tariq Javed (retd) said that PEC has been assigned the lead role for promoting innovative engineering products and local manufacturing of engineering goods, products and services. “PEC has established PITC and is facilitating innovators, researchers and product designers to locally develop and manufacture engineering goods/products. PEC has coined a new term ie Researchers and Product Development (R&PD) instead of R&D only,” he explained.

The focus was on collaboration manufacturing and product design / development which has an important aspect of integration between software and hardware. “The Ignite and PITC collaboration is the first step, which would result in an avalanche of further initiatives,” Javed said.

Ignite CEO Asim Shahryar Husain said Ignite would facilitate engineering students of PEC accredited institutions recommended by PITC, who could apply to their network of five incubators through innovative ideas and products. “We have been missing engineering-related equipment and facilities at our National Incubation Centers. So this partnership with PITC will help us in bridge this gap.” This collaboration would enable start-ups to carry out test and trials of their end products, have regulatory approval related help for their engineering goods, products and services including agri-products, robotics, virtual reality, etc.