ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: The Federal Minister for Science and Technology Rana Tanveer Hussain on Tuesday inaugurated the three-day International Workshop on ‘Technoparks: Opportunity to seize a lever of competitiveness’, at ORIC-Professional Development, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology in Islamabad.
The workshop is being supported by the Inter-Islamic Network on Science & Technology Parks (INSTP), Iran; OIC Ministerial Committee on Scientific and Technological Cooperation (COMSTECH); Economic Cooperation Organization Science Foundation (ECOSF); Islamic Development Bank and the Ministry of Science & Technology, Islamabad.
International experts from eight Islamic countries including; Gambia; Nigeria; Sudan; Malaysia; Indonesia; Iran; Tunisia and Palestine are participating in the workshop. These International participants will share experience with managing and establishing Technology Parks in the context of developing countries.
In his remarks, the federal minister lauded the efforts of CIIT in organizing a highly relevant workshop. He opined that the prosperity of Pakistan is rooted in the ability to commercialize knowledge being produced in the universities.
in his welcome address, the Rector CIIT Professor Dr. Raheel Qamar informed the audience that CIIT was among the top universities in nearly all popular rankings and that the university is committed to creating opportunities for its students where they can realize their potential and experiment with converting lab research into commercializable projects.
The President ECO-Science Foundation Dr. Manzoor H. Soomro encouraged the idea of establishing Science parks and talked about introducing a framework of cooperation in the upcoming ministerial meeting of the Economic Cooperation Organization.
The Coordinator General COMSTECH Dr. Shaukat Hameed Khan also proposed increasing science funding for efforts like Science Parks in the country. However, he cautioned that scientists must remain focused on quality of science; in addition to commercializing technology.
The workshop will touch upon areas like fundamentals of techno-parks; formats that can be used in techno-parks; Methodologies to stimulate innovation; techno-park tool box and other issues of intellectual property and funding in technology parks.
