Muhammad Shakeel Munir, President, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry (ICCI) leading a delegation visited HITEC University Taxila Cantt as a part of efforts to promote academia-industry linkages. Muhammad Faheem Khan Vice President ICCI, Ch. Muhammad Ali, Hamayun Kabir, Engr. Azhar ur Islam, Akhtar Hussain, Sheikh Muhammad Ijaz, Muhammad Saeed Khan, Rana Qaisar Shehzad, Muhammad Naveed Malik, Adnan Mukhtar, Ashfaq Chatha, Rashid Minhas, Umer Ismail and Khalid Chaudhry were in the delegation. The delegation visited various departments and the display centre of the university. The delegation discussed areas of collaboration with HITEC University to achieve beneficial results for the industry and academia.

Speaking at the occasion, Muhammad Shakeel Munir, President, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry appreciated the efforts of HITEC University, Taxila for providing quality education and excellent learning environment to its students. He also shared the key issues of industry and hoped that the students of HITEC University Taxila would try to find out their innovative solutions. He said that the developed countries have achieved better economic growth by developing strong academia-industry linkages and we should follow the same approach to make Pakistan a progressive and prosperous country. He said that universities are doing a lot of good research work and emphasized that they should focus on applied research & commercialization of research projects that would be more beneficial to the industry and economy.

ICCI President stressed that at least 50% content of the research works should be based on local content as currently majority of content in research works is based on foreign content. He said that ICCI has already signed MoUs with various universities to promote academia-industry linkages, which are very important to produce demand-driven students and meet the needs of industry. He said that ICCI would like to develop strong liaison with HITEC University to further strengthen linkages between industry and academia that would produce win-win outcomes for them.

Prof. Dr. S. Kamran Afaq, Acting Vice Chancellor, HITEC University, Taxila Cantt gave a presentation to the ICCI delegation about his university. He said that advanced labs, innovative & interactive teaching methodologies, foreign qualified & experienced faculty, conducive research opportunities, and academia-industry linkages have all been merged to place HITEC University among top emerging universities of Pakistan. He said that HITEC university gives a lot of emphasis on industry-academia linkages and would work closely with ICCI to take these initiatives forward. Both sides discussed a future roadmap for joint collaboration that would produce beneficial outcomes for academia and industry.