ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad Chamber of Commerce Industry (ICCI) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the International Islamic University Islamabad (IIUI) to promote industry-academia linkages and applied research projects, which could help resolve problems of industry.
The MoU was signed by Sardar Yasir Ilyas Khan, President, ICCI and Prof. Dr. Hathal Homoud Alotaibi, President, IIUI at a ceremony held at ICCI.
Fatma Azim Senior Vice President, Abdul Rehman Khan Vice President ICCI, Executive Members Aslam Khokhar, Saeed Khan, Muhammad Shakir, Shaukat Hayat Khan, Naeem Paracha as well as Khalid Chaudhry and other members of business community were also present at the occasion.
Both sides agreed to cooperate for encouraging industrial-oriented final year projects for students in order to produce demand-driven human resources for industry and work jointly on initiatives that could facilitate industrial efficiency and bring down production cost.
Both would conduct joint activities like conferences, seminars, workshops, job fairs, research projects, awareness sessions and other professional training programs of mutual interest.
Both would cooperate to hold vocational and skills development programs for training and promote a culture of entrepreneurship in students. ICCI would nominate relevant experts to the university Board of Studies and Industrial Advisory Boards as required by the Pakistan Engineering Council.
Both sides would cooperate for creation of internship and training programs for students to give them hands-on experience of working with experts in industry.
IIUI students would conduct research studies to identify the challenges being faced by the local industry and make presentations to meet these challenges before joint sittings of IIUI and ICCI.
IIUI would also provide a 10 percent discount in tuition fee to students of ICCI members on merit as decided by the University. IIUI may grant complete waiver in tuition fee to three deserving students every year through its various scholarship schemes for any program as recommended by ICCI and as per criteria of Donor agency.
ICCI would arrange joint meetings of industry representatives and IIU faculty & students to discuss the opportunities of fostering entrepreneurship in youth. ICCI would pass on information to IIU about different trainings being organized by it or government organizations for capacity building of faculty and students in different areas.
ICCI would also identify opportunities of internships for IIU students in industry and facilitate the placement of internees in industrial units, trading and corporate business houses.
Speaking at the occasion, Sardar Yasir Ilyas Khan, President ICCI said that the Chamber was working actively to promote strong industrial-academia linkages by signing MoU with various universities, which are very important to promote skills development, knowledge economy and entrepreneurship culture. He said these linkages also help in strengthening R&D initiatives to exploit the synergies and complementarities present in private sector and educational institutions.
He hoped that ICCI and IIUI cooperation would be helpful in fostering entrepreneurship in youth and resolving key problems of industry.
Prof. Dr. Hathal Homoud Alotaibi, President, IIUI in his address said that universities were producing quality research works that could benefit the industry by promoting strong linkages between universities and industry.
He hoped that ICCI and IIUI collaboration would help in industrial upgradation, knowledge sharing, skills enhancement and utilization of resources to accomplish the mutually beneficial goals of research, innovation, and commercialization.
