The University of Karachi students by developing environment-friendly organic plastic as substitute for plastic products such as plastic bags, products wrappers etc clinched first position at the Distinguished Innovation Collaboration Entrepreneurship (DICE) themed Agriculture and Food Sciences 2017 held at University of Agriculture Faisalabad.
The event was organized by Office of Research Innovation and Commercialization (ORIC) in collaboration with DICE Foundation. The concluding session was chaired by UAF Vice Chancellor Dr Muhammad Iqbal Zafar. The Karachi University five students team was led by Asma Tabassum and supervised by Hira Anwar. The judges analyzed the innovative products with the special focus on its impact on the lives of people, and agriculture sector. The organic plastic will be dissolved in the land and will raise its fertility also. The second position was won by University of Agriculture Faisalabad team led by Muhammad Abu Bakar who developed a mobile app to operate the operation of gardening from the distant away. Now the watering and other operation can be operated through mobile phones.
The third position was bagged by University of Agriculture team led by Zeeshan Haider by developing mechanized agri field sprayers machine.
Addressing on the occasion, Dr Muhammad Iqbal Zafar said that an idea can change the society. He said innovative ideas would not only open up new window of businesses but also help reduce the unemployment from the society. He quoted the example of the invention of penicillin helped to save of many lives. He called for putting our attention to serve the humanity. He added that it is matter of concern that one third of our pupation was living below the poverty line.
He said innovation works as lifeblood of any nation and economy and is a key ingredient for the sustainable progress and prosperity.
Chairman DICE USA Khurshed Qureshi showed concerns that despite talented people, we are heavily importing different things. He said that we can produce them in our country by flourishing the culture of innovation and self-reliance. He aids DICE was providing a seed of the sustainable growth by promoting the culture of innovation not only in agriculture and food sciences but also in health, energy, industry and others areas.
ORIC Director Dr Zahir Ahmad Zahir said the strong academia-industry linkages are imperative to make the development and to compete with the rest of the world. He stressed upon the need to come up with out-of-the-box solutions to problems of the general public and farming community. He said that in the DICE expo, 30 universities across the country participated and displayed 126 projects. Dr Aman Ullah said that such platform provides the opportunity to students to develop entrepreneurship skills. Dr Waseem Ahmad, Dr Naeem Asgahr, Dr Abdul Raheed, Dr Naveed, Farooq Hassan and others also spoke on the occasion.
