COMSATS Successfully holds 8th Coordinating Council, and Technical Advisory Committee Meetings in Cairo, Egypt (March 14 – 16, 2005)

H.E. Prof. Dr. Amr Salama, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Egypt inaugurated the opening ceremony of the Coordinating Council. The ceremony witnessed a full house and drew participation from the diplomatic community, international and scientific organizations, public officials and guests from various walks of life. H.E. Mr. Arif Ayub, the Ambassador of Pakistan to Egypt was also present at the occasion.

The Heads or the representatives of COMSATS International Science and Technology Centres of Excellence represent the Coordinating Council. They are 14 in number from different countries that meet annually. The Council expressed its satisfaction over the performance of past one year and vowed to make more efforts, where needed, to further enrich the areas of cooperation among the member-centres. It was also decided that the members would make efforts to bring in more funding from their respective governments while the COMSATS Secretariat was urged to work towards increasing the membership further. The meeting saw the signing of numerous Memoranda of Understanding [MoU] amongst different Centres of Excellence in a variety of fields relating to their common areas of interest. The Council also decided to speed up efforts for holding of the Commission’s meeting, which is represented by the Heads of States or government or their representatives from 21 member-countries of COMSATS. The success of the meeting can be gauged from the fact that Egypt and Jordan offered to hold the next edition of the meeting at their Centres.

The meeting of the Coordinating Council was followed by the Technical Advisory Committee [TAC] Meeting, whose members are renowned and eminent scientists, technologists and policy makers from all over the world. Dr. Ishfaq Ahmad (Special Advisor to the Prime Minister of Pakistan), Dr. R.J. Peterson of the University of Colorado, Prof Lewis Chadderton of Australian National University who also happens to be the advisor to the Australian government, and Dr. Sang Soo Lee of the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) were some of the members present at the meeting of TAC. Dr. Hameed Ahmed Khan, the Executive Director of COMSATS, led the delegation from COMSATS Headquarters.

The Technical Advisory Committee pressed the need for coming up with joint research projects by the Centres of Excellence so that it would not only facilitate securing funds from the donor-agencies and governments but also ensure the quality of the projects. The TAC members suggested that communication and coordinating within the Network should be frequent and strong. This would help members benefit from each others’ activities and research programmes and also help develop joint projects in research and development and application thereof. The members also stressed upon the need for having a web-based journal containing quality research articles and papers, accessible to all. In the end it was also suggested that COMSATS Secretariat and its members should make efforts to rope in the private sector specially multi-nationals as well instead of solely relying on the fundings from the representative governments of the Commission.

The unique feature of both the meetings was that the members of the Coordinating Council and the Technical Advisory Committee jointly attended and shared their views. The meetings received sizable coverage from the Egyptian media including the famous newspaper Al-Ahram. The Radio Cairo and the television also aired news segments on the successful holding of the meeting.

The Recommendations/Suggestions of the two meetings may be accessed using the following links:

Recommendations/Suggestions [Coordinating Council Meeting, March 14-15, 2005]

Recommendations/Suggestions [Technical Advisory Committee Meeting, March 16, 2005]