The Higher Education Commission (HEC) has asked faculty members to submit ideas for its Technology Development Fund to enable higher education institutions to act as catalysts for Pakistan's socioeconomic growth. The goal of this project is to support Pakistan's creative minds in their efforts to influence the economy through the development of cutting-edge technology, an HEC official said.

The fund will finance proposals of completed interdisciplinary applied research for prototype development and industrial value addition for technology-based product or process development, he added. This effort made it possible for the scientists working in the higher education sector of the research ecosystem to provide the industry with financial and technical support (IP, Licensing, and Commercialization) in order to solve local industrial challenges.

This programme has already funded 200 joint academia-industry projects and over 160 licensed to industry for mass scaling and commercialization. A good number of such projects have already started yielding revenue, which is shared with all stakeholders. The Central Development Working Party accepted the project's expanded scope to issue the 4th Call for Proposals after taking the aforementioned information into account.

Therefore, PhD Faculty Members with ready research, lab scale, or pre-prototype should submit proposals with consortiums of business and academic partners in thematic areas like climate change and its effects on Pakistan's socioeconomics, telecommunication, information and technology/computers, engineering sciences, micro-electronics, water, power, energy, and fleet management, as well as biotechnology and allied fields.

Other topics include material sciences/man-made material (nanotechnology), robotics, defense, and military needs and any other applied subject that is beneficial to the development of new goods or advances industrial level production.The proposed funded projects would be required to create a product or service that would, among other things, have a positive economic impact, solve a current issue, satisfy a market demand, use local raw materials, advance current products up the value chain, provide a lot of jobs, and generate income. The Office of Research Innovation and Commercialization (ORIC), the Research Office, or the Registrar Office of the applicants' respective universities must first review the research proposals before endorsing them to HEC for competitive consideration.

The forms for these submissions are available online. Candidates may submit an application for the project on or before December 30 through https://research.hec.gov.pkAccording to the official's explanation of the programme's eligibility requirements, applicants must be faculty members at public or private higher education institutions who have relevant commercialization partners from industry, investors, or private or public sector research and development institutes, spin-offs, or startups at top Incubation Centers or Accelerators. The proposals need to be joint academia-industry, multi-disciplinary, and multi-institutional ones leading to products or services which solve a current problem of industry, society or identify a new opportunity of business that brings positive cash-flows.

Credit : Independent News Pakistan-WealthPk