Introduction
The Interdisciplinary Research Centre is to conduct interdisciplinary research and development projects in the field of engineering and sciences with the goal to design, analysis and optimization for the development of products and processes indigenously for local industry and society for socioeconomic development of Pakistan in specific and for the global community in general.
Background
Centers of Excellence (CoE) are physical or virtual centers of research which concentrate existing capacity and resources to enable researchers to collaborate across disciplines on long-term projects that are locally relevant and internationally competitive in order to enhance the pursuit of research excellence and capacity development. Over the last one decade higher education in Pakistan has grown considerably specifically in the area of science and technology and many programs are started mostly at the undergraduate level. However a little effort is observed for the establishments of CoEs but is very limited to one or single discipline and the results output of these are not benefiting the community. The present era is observed a merger of sciences and even in the advanced world interdisciplinary programs were started even on undergraduate level in many universities in US, Europe, Japan and China almost a decade back realizing the fact of involving society at par with the scientific community. Just few examples are MIT (http://web.mit.edu/sts/about/index.html), History of Science Department, Harvard University (http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~hsdept/), Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Sweden (http://www.kth.se/eng), Department of Anthropology, Harvard University (http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/anthro), Graduate Consortium in Women’s Studies at Radcliffe (http://www.radcliffe.edu/gcws), The Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (http://beckman.illinois.edu/about), KAUST (http://kaust.edu.sa) and others. The aim of interdisciplinary research schools and education at UG level has been realized important to benefit the community.
COMSATS is one of the institutes in Pakistan which has taken lead for the establishment CoEs in multidisciplinary research like IRCBM in Lahore and other places, but need much more to involve excellent researchers available in all the campuses in multidiscipline. Keeping in view the potential IRC aims to develop and apply new innovative approaches which may include the development of indigenous methodologies and solutions to the local industrial and societal needs involving engineering sciences, technology and society. For efficient implementation, this requires the networking of all relevant stakeholders.
The IRC provides the necessary know-how and the infrastructure for research in the field of computational sciences, computational engineering and experimentation and developments of products and processes with the involvement of experts from COMSATS and scientific community from Pakistan and abroad in addition to the industrial experts on board.
By the IRC, a platform for scientific exchange and networking of interdisciplinary research in engineering and sciences at the COMSATS Univertsity is to be created. The IRC will have a key role to drive the focus formation of COMSATS Univertsity in the field of engineering and sciences both numerically and experimentally and will be the first one to address both the areas to solve real world problems faced by the local industry and will provide broader methodologies to the scientific community.
Another important aspect of the center is the promotion of cooperation with the engineering and scientific industry. In addition to search and strengthened, contact with the research-based industry at national and international level.
Vision
To be known for interdisciplinary research and education in engineering, sciences and social sciences, commitment to creation and dissemination of knowledge, developing technical, managerial, inter-personal and communication skills and contributing in socio-economic growth of the country through innovative solution methodologies for problems in a variety of fields via modeling, simulation and experimentation.
Mission
To provide excellent interdisciplinary wholesome research and education opportunities of modeling, simulation and experimentation in engineering and sciences to students from diverse background through competent faculty, researchers, adaptive mechanisms and enabling environment in collaboration with various constituencies of the society and industry and scientific community.
Objectives
The key objectives of the center are;
Short Term Objectives- To induct/integrate researchers/experts for interdisciplinary research in a variety of fields with primary focus on socio economic research areas including Water, Health, Energy, Defense, Communication, environment, food security etc.
- To establish a modern computational platform for large-scale simulation and other labs for research and supervision to graduate students enrolled with the faculty of the Center and others.
- To facilitate graduate programs of existing engineering and sciences disciplines and to develop and implement an Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Computational Sciences and Engineering with the available resources at CIIT Wah.
- To attract national and international research programs and composites and initiate collaborations (MoUs) for joint interdisciplinary research in engineering and sciences.
- To impart awareness among the industry practitioners to acquire and implement the modern design and analysis methodologies and research results.
- To promote cooperation with industry, bring funded research projects to provide indigenous solutions and products for long term and sustainable growth.
- To train industrial, research and academic personnel through specialized short courses, seminars, workshops, internships, short and long term study/visits abroad through national and international joint ventures.
- To publish research papers, technical reports and organize International Symposium/conference to disseminate research results to the scientific community.
Organizational Structure
