Seminar calls for close contact of academia, industry to strengthen national economy
Speakers of a seminar on ‘Academia-Industry Linkages: A way forward for Promoting Innovative and Need-based Research’ emphasized on close contact of universities, industry and public policy institutions for the creation of new knowledge with practical values which could guide public policy and industry and contribute to the betterment of mankind.
The seminar was organized by Office of Research, Innovation and Commercialization (ORIC), Sargodha University on November 30, 2018. Prominent among the speakers were Vice Chancellor Sargodha University Dr Ishtiaq Ahmad, Director Pakistan Institute of China Studies (PICS) Dr Fazal-ur-Rahman, Tariq Sarwar from Pakistan Flour Mill Association, Dr Asif Hanif from Agriculture University Faisalabad, Dr Ahsan Akram from Asian Digital Library Islamabad, Malik Abdul Qayyum form from Sitara Chemical Industry and Javed Iqbal from Soft Tech Sargodha. A large gathering of students, faculty members and staffers attended the seminar.
They urged for promoting academia-industry linkages to have a strong impact on local development and emphasized that universities should focus on applied research that would help in addressing major problems of the society.
Addressing the seminar as chief guest, Dr Ishtiaq Ahmad said: “We need to create new knowledge and innovative ideas through quality research and innovation at universities which could guide the public policy and contribute to the development of industry and national economy.”
He informed the seminar that Sargodha University looks forward to develop its niche in China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) as an institution with tangible contributions and pure academic output for the growth of the world.
“Our obligation is to facilitate productivity at this institution by finding, cultivating and facilitating the rare talent beneath the surface. We focus on actual delivery on ground which has been reflected in the QS World University Ranking 2019 which placed Sargodha University among the top 500 Asian universities,” he added.
Dr Fazal-ur-Rahman emphasized to learn from Chinese model which is about utilizing reverse tech transfer and borrowing tech according to the needs of the economy.
“Like China, which allocated this year 20% of its GDP to research and innovation, we have to adopt measures to invite investments from private sector to increase the spending on productive research that will ultimately facilitate the development process,” he added.
Appreciating the ORIC efforts in building linkages between the university and industry, Dr Fazal extended full support of PICS to the ORIC for taking maximum benefit from China’s experience and the underutilized CPEC.
During the technical session, Tariq Sarwar Awan gave a detailed presentation on entrepreneurial opportunities in Gwadar and urged the students to build themselves for exploiting the opportunities being created by CPEC in Gwadar and other parts of the country.
Dr Asif Hanif, while imparting techniques of patent writing to the participants, said that scientists must patent their invention otherwise anybody else can steal their formulas as in the case of famous scientist Bromley, who did not patent his invention and now credit of inventing digital watch lies with some Japanese scientists.
He urged the students to thoroughly search their research topic before staring the research as 25% of all research and development efforts around the world are wasted because the researchers work on already researched topics without knowing about the work already done in the field.
