Islamabad: (Parliament Times) In collaboration with the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC), USA, and under the technical sponsorship of Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and IEEE Communications Society, NUST School of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (SEECS) held “15th International Conference on High-capacity Optical Networks & Enabling/Emerging Technologies (HONET-ICT)” from October 8 to 10. HONET-ICT annually takes place at renowned destinations around the world . The conference’s theme this year was “Smart Cities – Improving quality of lives using ICT, IoT and AI” and brought together renowned scholars and scientists from across the globe.
Addressing the closing session, the chief guest, Federal Minister for Science & Technology Mr Azam Swati, praised NUST for organizing a conference of high academic value. Senator said that today technology has permeated all spheres of our daily life and this allows no exception. An individual who is not computer literate feels handicapped in performing even routine tasks. Especially, the advent of internet era has revolutionized human life and has changed the old concepts of time and space. He said Govt. of Pakistan in leadership of PM Imran Khan is doing all that is possible within its means and will do all that its resources permit, to be an effective link between the research being carried out at the university level and the planning to translate the research output to finding innovative solutions to our problems at the government level. We know the road to economic progress passes through university labs. The sole objective of Ministry of Science and Technology is to promote applied research with a view to making it an instrument of national progress.
Earlier in his remarks, Lt Gen Naweed Zaman, HI (M), (Retd), Rector NUST, said that HONET-ICT, 2018 has met total success through the efforts of its organizers & scholarly participants. Rector emphasized that Science and technology in this age are not only finding solutions to the grave medical, ecological, and social problems, and are adding facility and comfort to human life, but are also trying to eliminate poverty and boost countries’ economies. It is because no economy can expand and prosper today, by passing modern technology. This brings us to knowledge-based economy that is the secret of overall success for the poor societies. If the base of modern scientific knowledge is expanded through activities of educative value like HONET-ICT, more and more people around the world, especially those from under-privileged economies are sure to benefit from it.