Fah Luang University Thailand hosts moot Central project turns most disseminated research project

on 16/02/2023

Mae Fah Luang University, Thailand organized CENTRAL Meeting from November 28 to December 1st,2022 at Mantrini, Chiang Rai, Thailand. Welcome dinner was arranged in honor of all the participants on 28th November 2022. Dr Punnarumol and Dr Chayapol Kamyod from Mae Fah Luang University welcomed all the participants along with their seniors and team members.
On 29th November 2022, Opening Remarks were given by Prof. Ramjee Prasad. After that, Welcome Remarks were given by the Vice Dean of Mae Fah Luang University Assistant Prof. Dr. Worasak Rueangsirarak. Muhammad Zakir Shaikh delivered his presentation on CENTRAL: Touching the Apex of the Sky (an epitome of dissemination for all projects). It was appreciated and acknowledged with great happiness by all the partners that CENTRAL Project has become the most disseminated academic & research project at Global Level.
Besides a detailed discussion on respective work packages, Partner universities from Mehran University of Engineering and Technology, Pakistan, Sir Syed University of Engineering and Technology Pakistan, Kolhapur Institute of Technology India, Technical University of Sofia Bulgaria, The Host University Mae Fah Luang, Chiang Mai University Thailand, University of Malaga and Viswaniketan presented their reports and success stories.
On 1st December 2022, MOU ceremony between MFU and CGC, KITCOEK, and SSUET. President MFU and Vice President MFU also welcomed all the participants. Moreover, all the participants had a memorable campus visit and visit various other renowned places in Chiang Rai. At the end of the event, Engr Muhammad Zakir Shaikh was given an award for his outstanding contributions to the CENTRAL Project. Prof Dr Bhawani Shankar also addressed all the partners during which he stressed the need for long-term collaboration and to create opportunities for everyone.
The overall aim of the project is to support Asian countries to modernize, internationalize and increase access to higher education, increase cooperation with the EU, voluntarily converge with EU development in higher education, and promote people-to-people contacts, intercultural awareness, and understanding. President MFU Assoc. Prof. Dr. Chayaporn Wattanasiri also thanked all the participants and assured them of continued cooperation and collaboration with all the partners.n

Banks, FIs need to allocate required resources for floods related R&D: governor SBP

on 16/02/2023

Governor State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) Jameel Ahmad has said climate change is the biggest long-term threat to the country due to its unforeseen impacts adding while the government, businesses, and societies are recognizing such threats we need to take timely actions and allocate required resources for research and development of relevant products and services and capacity building of stakeholders to address them preemptively.


Mr. Ahmed who chaired the annual meeting of the Agricultural Credit Advisory Committee (ACAC) in Hyderabad appreciated banks for achieving unprecedented agriculture credit disbursement of Rs1,419 billion in FY22. He noted that for FY23, the target of Rs1,819 billion has been set in line with the government’s priority and added that during the first five months of FY23, Rs664 billion have already been disbursed.


He added that Prime Minister has announced the Kissan Package, comprising of restructuring and rescheduling of agriculture loans, mark-up waiver for outstanding small loans in flood-affected areas, interest-free loans for subsistence & landless farmers, and subsidized loans and risk sharing scheme for farm mechanization, besides other support measures. Governor SBP elaborated that the package will facilitate the recovery of farmers from the impact of recent floods and urged banks to implement the package in letter and spirit. He also assured SBP’s full support to the banks wherever needed.
The governor also underlined that banks have a huge opportunity to exploit the untapped potential of Islamic agriculture financing with respect to SBP’s recent commitment to the transformation of conventional banking to Islamic banking in the next five years. He noted that the share of Islamic financing in agriculture financing is still quite low and urged the industry to work on developing demand-driven Islamic financing products, specifically tailored to the requirements of the farming community.
Governor’s inaugural address was followed by a presentation on the performance of banks in agricultural financing. The ACAC deliberated on the new directions in agricultural financing particularly regarding climate-smart agriculture practices and the role that financial institutions can play. Moreover, the champion banks, nominated by the ACAC to spearhead the efforts in underserved areas, presented the progress in their respective assigned underserved provinces or regions.


The ACAC meeting was attended by senior officials of federal & provincial governments, presidents/CEOs of banks, members of provincial chambers of agriculture, progressive farmers, representatives of regional farming communities, and SBP senior officials.

In a simple ceremony held at Islamabad, Bestway Foundation and NAMAL University signed an agreement to establish Bestway Scholarship

on 16/02/2023

Engr. Dr. Muhammad Nawaz Iqbal

A heat pump is a device that uses the refrigeration cycle to transfer thermal energy from the outside to heat a building (or a portion of a building). Many heat pumps can also be used to cool a building by rejecting heat outdoors after removing it from the enclosed area. Air conditioners are devices that only offer to cool. An example of refrigerant that is at room temperature gets compressed while the heating mode is on. The refrigerant heats up as a result. To an indoor unit, this thermal energy can be transferred. The refrigerant is squeezed and then let outside once more. It returns to the environment cooler than it was before it lost some of its thermal energy. Before the cycle restarts, it can now absorb the ambient energy from the ground or the air. Pumps, fans, and compressors all use electricity to operate.
Heat pumps with an air source, a ground source, a water source, or an exhaust air source are common varieties. Additionally, district heating systems employ them. A ground-source heat pump, also known as a geothermal heat pump in North America, extracts heat from the ground or groundwater below a depth of about 30 feet, where both are kept at a comparatively constant temperature throughout the year (9.1 m). A well-maintained ground-source heat pump would normally have a seasonal COP of about 3.0 as heat is taken from the ground and a COP of approximately 4.0 at the start of the heating season. Due to the necessity of drilling boreholes for the vertical placement of heat exchanger pipe or trenches for the horizontal placement of the piping carrying the heat exchange fluid, ground-source heat pumps are more expensive to install (water with a little antifreeze).
Since the Paleolithic era, geothermal heating has been utilized for space heating and bathing, respectively, utilizing water from hot springs. Geothermal power, the phrase used to describe the production of electricity from geothermal energy, has become more significant in recent years. Although only a very small portion of the earth’s geothermal energy is now being effectively utilized, frequently in regions close to tectonic plate borders, it is estimated that the earth’s geothermal energy resources are theoretically more than sufficient to meet humanity’s energy needs.
A ground heat exchanger in contact with the ground or groundwater is used by ground source heat pumps to extract or release heat. Accurate system design is essential to a successful system since poor design can lead to the system freezing after several years or to very inefficient system performance.
Heating performance is often reduced to dimensionless units as the coefficient of performance while cooling performance is typically stated in units of BTU/hr/watt. The BTU/hr/watt conversion factor is 3.41. The overall energy output is significantly more than the electrical input since a heat pump moves three to five times as much heat energy as it does electric energy. Since radiant electric heat is 100% efficient, this leads to net thermal efficiencies of more than 300%. Electric heaters and conventional combustion furnaces are never capable of achieving 100% efficiency. When compared to electric resistance heating and conventional air-conditioning equipment, ground-source heat pumps can cut energy usage – and the associated air pollution emissions – by up to 72%.
By utilizing inter-seasonal heat transfer and seasonal thermal energy storage, ground source heat pumps’ efficiency can be significantly increased. Thermal banks allow for the efficient retrieval of heat that was caught and stored over the summer. The importance of this advantage is greatest in commercial or district heating systems because heat storage efficiency rises with scale.

Bestway Foundation sets up Rs60m scholarship
endowment fund

on 16/02/2023

In a simple ceremony held at Islamabad, Bestway Foundation and NAMAL University signed an agreement to establish Bestway Scholarship Endowment Fund of Rs 60 million for the benefit of financially challenged students enrolled at the University’s undergraduate programs. The scholarships will be given to twenty student beneficiaries, primarily covering their fee expenses every year.
Speaking on the occasion, Irfan Sheikh, Trustee Bestway Foundation and Managing Director, Bestway Cement Limited said, “Higher education is essential for building a stronger Pakistan, whereas many talented and well deserving youth is unable to continue their education due to lack of sufficient financial resources. Bestway Foundation, in keeping with its resolve to support deserving students, decided to set up an endowment fund with NAMAL to provide financial assistance to the students applying in undergraduate degree program in either of the disciplines of Computer Sciences, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and BBA. The Foundation has already established similar endowment funds with Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) and National University of Sciences & Technology (NUST)

Growing cybersecurity skills gap necessitates human factor security

on 16/02/2023

Concerns of cyber security, cyber bullying, and cyber hygiene are relevant in this age of media where children are all time wired to social media and the internet. Every person needs to be aware of the steps they take to keep them safe from any kind of harm. So, to represent the needs of the cybersecurity ecosystem in the world, IEEE, IES Karachi Section Chapter in Collaboration with Higher Education Authority, Ireland successfully organized the workshop on “CYBER SKILLS” held on 23-Dec-2022 at VDC Hall, IICT Building, Mehran University of Engineering & Technology, Jamshoro.
This workshop was organized to acknowledge people about how to detect and mitigate cyber-attacks. It provides training on Cyber Range, Analyzing Potential Malware, Identifying Live Machines, Service Identification, and Protocol Analysis.
The event started with the recitation of the Holy Quran. Afterward, Dr. Abi Waqas, organizer of the event and also serving as Branch Counselor IEEE MUET STB and Chair IEEE IES Karachi Section presented the opening remarks. He welcomed the Chief Guest, Guest speaker, teacher coordinators, and participants and started the formal proceedings of the event.
The chief guest of the event, Prof. Dr. Tuaha Hussain Ali Vice Chancellor of MUET mentioned the need for Cyber Skills in this digital world where things can’t work out without social media and the internet. He also appreciated the efforts of the whole team and the coordinators, Dr. Abi Waqas and Chief organizer Prof. Dr. Bhawani Shankar Chowdhry for arranging such a workshop through which people can be aware of the risks on social media. He also emphasized the role of IEEE in the capacity building of students and professionals. He said, IEEE has a great significance in extra co-curricular activities of this university and bought so many glories for Mehran UET and he believed that such technical activities will be proven instrumental for students in the future.
The chief coordinator of the event Prof.Dr.Bhawani Shankar Chowdhry who is also serving as CHAIR IEE KARACHI SECTION, organized this workshop to acknowledge people about the cyber range and Malware protection so that they can acquire knowledge about Cyber Security. He also expressed his positive thoughts on IEEE for being the most vibrant engineering society worldwide. Prof stressed the students focus on life-building skills along with academic knowledge and technical skills. He considered communication, interaction, and confidence as important skills when a student becomes a part of the team/organization. As of today, students are facing a lot of challenges to kick-start their careers, he called patience, tolerance, and hard work as keys to success in connecting individuals to the right Industries.
The event was joined by a renowned guest speaker who delivered his keynote virtually, Dr. Thomas Newe, he received his Honors Degree in Computer Engineering in 1991. Following this, he worked as a senior software engineer with The Microelectronics Applications Centre (MAC), in Ireland. He was awarded his Ph.D. in 2003 from the University of Limerick for work on Formal Verification Logic for use in security protocol design.
He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering at the University of Limerick, group leader of the IoT/WSN Security activities in the Optical Fibre Sensors Research Centre (www.ofsrc.ul.ie) and the Centre for Robotics and Intelligent Systems (www.cris.ul.ie), a PI in Confirm (www.confirm.ie), and FI in the MaREI (www.marei.ie), and Lero (www.lero.ie) SFI National Research Centres.
A renowned guest Dr. Muzaffar Rao who is currently a Lecturer in the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, University of Limerick (UL) conducted the workshop physically. He is also an Associated Investigator (AI) in ‘Lero – Irish Software Engineering’ and ‘CONFIRM – Smart Manufacturing research centers. He was awarded his Ph.D. in January 2017 from the University of Limerick. During his Ph.D., he worked on the hardware implementation of cryptographic algorithms/security protocols. His research interests include OT/ICS security, IT/OT integration, BitW (Bump-in-the-Wire) security, AI/ML in cybersecurity, IoTs & IIoTs, robotic automation, cyber-physical systems, and Embedded systems. His research work has resulted in several peer-reviewed publications at international conferences and Journals
He spoke about Cyber skills and the Cyber range that it is a virtual environment that allows organizations to practice cyber combat training. It’s a powerful way of replicating existing information systems to test and develop a skill set such as pen testing, network protection, system hardening, TTPs, and incident response. It is also a relevant means to raise awareness, especially among managers and board members, by showing them in a realistic manner what damages can be caused by ransomware attacks.
A successful workshop to spread awareness among the people about the cyber-attacks and how to stay protected from those attacks using the cyber range was attended by many students from different departments of Mehran University of Engineering and Technology Jamshoro (MUET). The Coordinators Dr.Abi Waqas Memon Chair of IEEE Karachi Section, Dr. Faheem Yar Khuhawar Associate Prof, TL, MUET. and the whole team managed to arrange such a wonderful event. A closing ceremony was arranged at the end in which all participants and volunteers were awarded certificates for their dedication. Tokens of appreciation were also presented to distinguished guests of the event.