Islamabad: Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has awarded gold medals with cash prizes to 12 students of various distinguished educational institutes of the country for the best research projects on IT & telecom for the year 2009. Secretary Cabinet Division, Abdul Rauf Chaudhry presented gold medals to the winners of the competition during a ceremony held at PTA Headquarters, Islamabad today. Chairman PTA, Dr. Mohammed Yaseen, Member (Finance) PTA, Syed Nasrul Karim Ghaznavi, Member (Technical) PTA, Dr. Khawar Siddique Khokhar were also present on the occasion. The event was attended by faculty members of the universities, parents of the awardees and representatives of the industry.

These gold medals have been awarded on the basis of a competition among accredited national universities called by PTA in April 2009 for the best research projects on IT & telecom. Various educational institutes responded to this call and nominated their students for the competition. Total 18 research projects were received from different universities which were later on scrutinized and evaluated by a PTA committee through a transparent procedure of marking. On the basis of highest obtained marks four research projects were selected for the award of Rs.50,000/- each and gold medals for the 12 participants of these projects.

Addressing the ceremony, Secretary Cabinet Division said that PTA has taken this initiative proactively which should be appreciated and followed by the whole telecom industry especially by the operators to take maximum advantage from the research work of these young scholars. While appreciating the winners of the competition he assured of the effective utilization of these projects in the decision making processes. He said that this scheme would go a long way in developing a strong relationship between the Academia, Industry and the relevant government organizations and would turn out to be exemplary for the rest of the sectors of our economy.

In his welcoming address, Chairman PTA said that as reflected from the telecom indicators, growth in the telecom sector has been immense in recent past years. Similarly education sector has also shown tremendous growth in terms of adding an increased number of educational and professional institutions, development of faculty and students’ enrolments whereas growth in research on IT & telecom in Pakistan has not been proportionate. Therefore, he said, intense local research activities are need of the hour to sustain previous growth patterns. This step can be helpful in creating a strong industry-academia linkage which would enable us to understand the views of researchers regarding pertinent issues faced by the industry. He said that we can evaluate the practicability and level of implementation of these research projects at our levels and can bring improvements which could help us in achieving our goals.

Chairman said that PTA introduced the Industry Academia Linkage in 2008 to fill the gap between sector development and research requirements of the industry. Gold medals to first batch of students were awarded by the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Syed Yousuf Raza Gillani on World Telecom & Information Society Day, May 17, 2008. He said that this is the second batch of students receiving these awards. The prime objective of these awards is to encourage academia’s participation in the development of telecom sector through their research work, he added.

Dr. Yaseen appreciated the efforts of the winners of the awards and their supervisors who supported them in achieving this distinguished honour. He said that we would look forward to continued contribution of educational institutions in future as their research works can lead to the exploration of new frontiers in the telecom sector. He said that PTA assures its full cooperation in this regard and would welcome the participation of other industry stakeholders to make this industry-academia linkage stronger.

 

Khurram A.Mehran

Director (PR)