National University of Sciences and Technology

Infobox_University
name =National University of Sciences and Technology

motto =A Progressive Vision for the Future
established =1991
type =Public
patron in chief =Asif Ali Zardari
Chancellor =Yousuf Raza Gillani
rector =Lt Gen Muhammad Asghar
city =Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Karachi, Risalpur
state =Punjab
country =Pakistan
website = [http://www.nust.edu.pk www.nust.edu.pk] The National University of Sciences and Technology, (NUST) is a public university located at several campuses in Pakistan that primarily trains members of the Pakistan armed forces. The main campus is located in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.It offers undergraduate and post graduate degrees in the fields of engineering, information technology (IT), medical sciences and management sciences. Formed by pooling together military and civil educational resources, NUST was ranked 20th among the top universities in a survey of science and technology schools in the Asia-Pacific region in 2000 by AsiaWeek. [http://www.asiaweek.com/asiaweek/features/universities2000/scitech/sci.overall.html AsiaWeek.com:Asia's Best Universities 2000 Overall Ranking] ] NUST has also won its place in the most prestigious ranking list of ‘Top 500 World Universities’ published by Times Higher Educations Supplement (THES).

History

National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) was established by the Government of Pakistan in 1991 for the promotion of higher scientific education in the country, especially in the field of sciences and technology, by providing stable and disciplined academic environment together with a need based research opportunities pertinent to our industrial requirements. NUST is the first model university established by the Ministry of Science and Technology like KAIST of Korea. The university was granted the Charter in 1993. Besides covering a wide variety of engineering disciplines, the horizon of NUST covers (but does not limit to) information technology, medical, management sciences and basic sciences.

The university is based on a multi-campus concept, which envisages its over 40 years old constituent colleges to grow and develop in the existing locations as centres of excellence in their own fields of specialization. An outstanding feature of the university is that while maintaining traditional values of excellence in teaching and research, it challenges the conventional practices and creates new ways of developing and delivering courses on the most modern lines.

Mission

The National University of Sciences and Technology with its progressive and innovative outlook, striving to be a modern multi-disciplinary center of excellence for research and development, will continue to offer quality yet accessible undergraduate, master and doctoral level education in order to meet the industrial, defence and national needs. Students, selected on merit without discrimination, will learn the methods and outcomes of disciplined inquiry in various engineering, medical, IT, management, and other sciences, guided by a faculty, known for its commitment to creation, innovation, and application of knowledge. The university community will strive to create challenging educational and cultural environments for students to refine their ability to reason and to communicate freely and clearly so as to become responsible, morally equipped, moderate and well rounded citizens of a diverse world.

Programmes at NUST

NUST offers a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in the following four areas:

UNDERGRADUATE
* Engineering Civil Engineering Computer Software Engineering Computer Engineering Electrical Engineering Mechanical Engineering Mechatronics Engineering Aerospace Engineering Avionics Engineering Telecommunications Engineering Bachelors in Information & Communication Systems Engineering (BICSE)
* Information Technology (IT) Bachelor of Information Technology (BIT)

* Medicine Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) Bachelor of Dental Surgery (BDS)

* Management Sciences Bachelor of Business Administration (Hon) (BBA)

POSTGRADUATE
* Engineering
* Information Technology (IT)
* Management Sciences

NUST Achievements

During the short span of its existence, NUST has achieved recognition at both the national and international levels and can proudly highlight the following achievements:

* Has developed active collaborations with foreign universities of international repute for split programmes at PhD level, exchange of faculty and students to ensure regular flow of knowledge at least cost.

* Has MS programmes leading to PhD in almost all engineering and IT disciplines.

* Has MPhil and PhD programmes in almost all disciplines in engineering, IT, medical and management sciences.

* Has made substantial progress in R&D to solve the problems of the public and private sector.
* Is providing training and consultancy services to the industry and other business organizations.

* Has been awarded the prestigious Associate Membership of CERN (Centre for European Nuclear Research), Geneva, based on the performance and potential in the field of IT.

* NUST Institute of Information Technology (NIIT) has been awarded status of Authorized Academic Training Programme Institution (AATPI) by Microsoft Corporation, USA.

* In recognition of excellent performance in IT, Intel Corporation and NCR Corporation, USA have established their IT labs at NIIT.

* NUST has established facilities for conducting National and International video conferencing between its campuses for distance learning, thesis defence and video lectures by eminent scholars.

* Has the distinction of being the first university in Pakistan to achieve ISO 9000 certification.

* Is member of the Association of Commonwealth Universities(ACU).

* Has procured hi-tech lab equipment essentially needed for doctoral/postdoctoral research work with financing through Islamic Development Bank (IDB).

* IDB is financing 250,000 US dollars as grant for availing the services of highly qualified researchers from abroad, over and above the programmes of Ministry of Science & Technology (MoST).

* The Center for European Nuclear Research (CERN) invited two brilliant research students of NUST to present their research findings at its campus in Switzerland. A team of software engineers from NUST has been developing an agent-based framework in collaboration with the California Institute of Technology (CALTECH), USA. This research resulted in development of state of the art software to be used for scientific analysis by CERN scientists in particular and for Grid environment in data intensive business and financial applications in general.

* Adding to the achievements of National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), the university has proudly received grant of 4000,000 Euros from European Commission for its project titled "STAFF" (Selection, Training and Assessment of Future Faculty). This grant has provided an opportunity to NUST to address the need of improving the higher education situation in Pakistan. NUST scientists are convinced that this milestone will provide the solution to the core problem of acute shortage of suitably qualified faculty especially in more technical areas such as Information Technology and Computer Sciences.

* Two years of consistent development efforts at NUST Institute of IT in collaboration with Dr. Hiroki Suguri, Vice president and CTO Comtech Japan, have resulted into an open source Multi Agent System SAGE (Scalable Fault Tolerant Agent Grooming Environment) for developing agent-based applications. Launching ceremony of indigenously developed Multi-Agent System: SAGE was held on 29 November 2004 at NUST Headquarters Rawalpindi. Market for the agent based application is growing very rapidly in the global market, where SAGE can play very crucial role for future intelligent application development. SAGE is a framework and it can be used to develop applications in a number of areas such as e-health, e-government and e-science. This agent platform is competitive to JADE a de-facto platform being currently used worldwide.

* Mobile Technologies have gone through a revolution in the past three years and Pakistan has seen a phenomenal growth in mobile service subscribers in that period. NUST Institute of Information Technology has established a 3G Mobile Technologies Research Lab for research and experimentation in the vital areas like GSM and CDMA. In addition, NIIT has established an advanced network engineering research lab equipped with state-of-the-art ATM switch hardware received from CERN.

NUST Master Plan

A new campus is being established in Sector H-12 Islamabad to cater fast-growing requirements of a technologically advanced campus of science and technology. Besides NUST Headquarters, the schools that will be relocated to this campus are:

School of Civil & Environmental Engineering School of Mechanical & Manufacturing Engineering NUST School of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (NUST - SEECS) School of Chemical & Materials Engineering Research Centre for Modeling & Simulation (RCMS) Centre for Advanced Mathematics & Physics (CAMP) NUST Centre of Virology and Immunology NUST Business School

This campus is spread over 706 acres of land and is co-located with Tech Town in Sector I-12, where IT and electronics related industries and Technology Parks are planned to be set up, so as to promote University-Industry linkages.Undergraduate and graduate programmes are scheduled to commence at the new campus from Fall 2008.

Notes

2. [http://nust.edu.pk/usr/showcontents.aspx?mdl=1654 NUST Makes to ‘Top 500 World Universities’]

External links

* [http://www.nust.edu.pk/ Official site]