Annual Report 2010 - Comsats

UNESCO’s grant of US$ 35,000/- will be spent on providing travel grants, as well as
covering boarding and lodging expenses of the international participants/resource
persons for the five scientific events. The administrative and logistic expenditure
related to these events will be borne by the host/collaborating institutions. With the
spirit of sharing and collaboration, COMSATS will also bear any expenditure upto
US$ 10,000/-, incurred over and above UNESCO’s grant.
Executive Director COMSATS’Visit to GCISC- Pakistan
The Executive Director COMSATS visited the Global Change Impact Studies Centre
(GCISC), Islamabad, on October 7, 2010, and held a meeting with its Executive
Director, Dr. Arshad Muhammad Khan. He was accompanied by Dr. Hasibullah,
Advisor (I. A) COMSATS, Dr. Amir H. Malik, HEC Foreign Professor at CIIT, and Engr.
Farhan Ansari, Assistant Director (Programmes) COMSATS. In the meeting, GCISC
was also represented by Dr. M. Mohsin Iqbal, Head of Agriculture Section, and Mr.
GhazanfarAli, Head of Water Section & Glaciology Group.
Annual Report 2010
The purpose of the meeting was to
establish strong collaborative
relations between COMSATS and
GCISC, exchange information
regarding the past and present
activities of the two organizations,
and discuss the possibility of
launching a collaborative effort
focused on improving the waterresource
management in Pakistan,
in collaboration with the International
Institute for Applied Systems
Analysis (IIASA), based in Austria,
and two of the Centres of Excellence
of COMSATS, namely COMSATS
Institute of Information Technology
(CIIT), Islamabad, and the
International Centre for Climate and
Environment Sciences (ICCES),
China.
During the meeting, Dr. Qureshi was informed that the climate and geographical
modeling being performed at GCISC is of high accuracy and is, on request, being
provided to the Newcastle University, UK, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT), USA, as well as the World Bank. In exchange, the Newcastle University and
MIT have been providing support to GCISC in its capacity building. Dr. Khan also
informed that GCISC has been providing technical training in the field of mathematical
modeling to the young scientists/engineers from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, India and
Nepal. While discussing the facilities available at the research centre, Dr. Qureshi
offered the assistance of COMSATS Internet Services (CIS) for resolving the datastorage
problems being faced by GCISC.
Dr. Hasibullah opined that the research organizations working in the area of waterresource
management in Pakistan have valuable statistics available with them, which
40