National University of Computer & Emerging Sciences

May 2015 Newsletter Vol: 6 Issue: 9 FAST-NU holds prize distribution ceremony

The prize distribution ceremony for Fall excellent citizens. FAST-NU is focusing and well-trained human resources. 2014 and Spring 2015 of FAST-NU was on applied research which held at the Islamabad campus on April 18, can make a significant 2015. About 87 medals and cash prizes were difference to our national awarded to the position holders. Dr. Amir productivity, he said. Muhammed, Rector FAST-NU, graced the He said the way to hope ceremony as the chief guest. and prosperity is to fully The Rector said that FAST-NU not only and effectively utilize the focused on the academic and professional resources of and the development of students, but also work biggest asset of Pakistan is on their personal growth to make them the exceptionally intelligent CFD campus organizes 2nd Business & Technology Conference FAST-NU Chiniot-Faisalabad campus the conference. He addressed the opening among the keynote speakers. organized the 2nd Business and Technology ceremony and stressed the need of industry Mr. Qaiser Ahmad Sheikh addressed Conference titled “BIZTECH 2015” and academia collaboration in Pakistan the conference on recent trends and on April 11, 2015. A large number of to achieve the goal of a knowledge-based opportunities on the business arena businessmen, IT experts and dignitaries economy. of the country. Mr. Tahir Chaudhary attended the event. Rector FAST-NU, Dr. Mr. Qaiser Ahmad Sheikh, MNA and spoke on entrepreneurship and business Amir Muhammed was the chief guest of Member BoG FAST-NU, Dr. Aftab Maroof, development opportunities in Pakistan. Dr. Mr. Tahir Chaudhary, President Pakistan Mazhar Jamil gave an inspirational talk on Institute of Entrepreneurship, Dr. Mazhar leadership skills. Ms. Maria Umar presented Jamil, CEO Leadership and Management her ideas on contributions of women Solutions, Ms. Maria Umar, Founder towards the society and opportunities for Women’s Digital League, Mr. Arslan women in the digital market. Dr. Asif Hassan, Founder of tune.pk, Engineer Mahmood Gilani, Director CFD campus, Rizwan Ashraf, President Faisalabad expressed his gratitude to the distinguished Chamber of Commerce & Industry (FCCI), guests and participants from the industry and Dr. Habib Aslam Gaba, Chairman and academia for making BIZTECH 2015 a Academia-Industry Linkage FCCI, were successful event. Participation in INQAAHE Conference in USA | FAST-NU wins INQAAHE scholarship The Quality Enhancement Cell of FAST- papers were presented to contemplate standards followed by Pakistan in academic NU actively participated in the conference upon the development of quality excellence. on “Changing Landscape of Higher assurance frameworks which may fit to the FAST-NU QEC contributed in all the Education: New Demands on Quality requirements of emerging industrial and pertinent sessions of the conference and Assurance” organized by International research strategies. pre-conference workshops. Further, our Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher This year INQAAHE allocated nine QEC manager delivered a presentation Education (INQAAHE) from March 30 to scholarships worldwide to facilitate scholarly in collaboration with Higher Education April 3, 2015 in Chicago, USA. Manager contribution by quality professionals in Commission (HEC) Pakistan to apprise QEC Mr. Farrukh Idrees represented FAST- the subject convention. Three out of nine the audience about existing quality model NU in this prestigious global conference. fellowships were won by Pakistan. The of Pakistani universities and shed light on The conference elaborated innovative recipients of Pakistani scholars belong to the future trends in the higher education global future trends in managing quality FAST-NU, Higher Education Commission management. FAST-NU QEC efforts for assurance frameworks for conventional, (HEC), and Institute of Management continual improvements in education hybrid and distant learning higher Sciences, Peshawar. This landmark management were highly appreciated by the education management models. Various achievement is a testimony to higher quality audience. campus starts series of graduate seminars Hussain, Head of Electrical Engineering Department, and Dr. Amjad Hussain will oversee the progress of seminars. Dr. Amjad Hussain is designated as coordinator of the Graduate Seminar. Two seminars had been conducted on March 6 and April 3. Dr. S. M. Sajid and Mr. A. D. Raza addressed the first seminar. Dr. S. M. Sajid presented an overview on “Optical Wireless Communication”, whereas Mr. A. D. Raza presented his published work titled “Bounds on the Capacity of an Optical Wireless Relay Channel”. Dr. Arshad Hussain and Mr. Muhammad Ahmad Raza presented in the second seminar. Dr. Arshad Hussain gave a short Electrical Engineering Department of management will also invite distinguished tutorial on “Cramer-Rao Lower Bound FAST-NU Lahore has planned to organize guests from academia and industry in (CRLB)”, while Mr. Muhammad Ahmad a “Graduate Seminar” on the first Friday of these seminars for knowledge sharing with Raza presented a derivation of “Analytical every month. Faculty members will present students. The decision was taken on the Expression for CRLB on the Variance of their research work in these seminars. guidance and instructions by Rector FAST- Unbiased Non-Data-Aided (NDA) Signal to Tutorial presentation on a particular NU Dr. Amir Muhammed. Noise Ratio (SNR) Estimates of the Hyper- research topic will also be arranged. The A committee comprising Dr. Arshad Cubic Modulated Signals”.

Achievement in business FAST-NU wins LUMS Sports Festival 2015 competitions FAST School of Management, Fast Sports Society Lahore won All Pakistan also the Best Delegate Trophy winner. campus has received three laurels in three LUMS Sports Fest leading Business Competitions. FSM won 2015, deemed as the SZABIST Karachi Business Challenge one of the biggest event beating over 40 teams from leading sports competitions business schools. The FSM team also stood of Pakistan. This is runner-up at LUMS Marketing Challenge the third consecutive held at LUMS, Lahore. Fifty teams from year that Fast Sports major institutions of Pakistan participated Society has won this in this competition. FSM got 6th position tournament. in KSBL International Business Challenge FAST-NU students competition and also won consolation prize won gold medals for being the only BBA level team beating in and table many MBA teams. It is noteworthy that in tennis, silver medals all of these competitions, mostly MBA teams in table tennis, from across Pakistan participated. While badminton, lawn FAST-NU students from BBA 6th Semester tennis and squash. thrived in the contests. FAST-NU Lahore was Workshop on COMSOL Multi-physics ICE NUCES Student Chapter Lahore physics of the software. Different operations organized a workshop on teaching the basics were explained briefly while precisely of ‘COMSOL Multi-Physics’ on March 20. describing modules. The students in their Dr. Muazzam Ghous, Faculty Member and senior year significantly benefitted from Student Advisor, was the moderator of the workshop. Dr. Moazzam also shared the workshop. He taught students various his views with the audience and encouraged aspects of software mainly focusing on the students to continue participating in such operations and functions related to the student development initiatives.

2 Mega Challenge 2015 held at Peshawar campus

Mega Challenge 2015 (MC-15) was held competition. prizes to the winners and runner-ups of in FAST-NU Peshawar on April 4 and Provincial Minister for Mineral different competitions. Gomal University 5, 2015. This was the second event of its Development KPK, Mr. Zia Ullah Afridi was stood winner of MC-15. kind in province the chief guest of opening after the first Mega Challenge held in 2013. ceremony and cultural Educational institutions from across KPK night. Local politicians participated in the MC-15. Competitions in and KPK government fourteen categories were organized during officials also attended the event. These categories included qirat, the ceremony. Director naat, bilingual declamation, humorous General Sports and Youth bilingual declamation, painting, sketching, Affairs, KPK, Capt. (Retd) calligraphy, photography, ad making, video Mian Adil Iqbal was the making, quiz competition, drama, chief guest of the closing singing competition and Pashto singing ceremony. He awarded Peshawar campus students attend Pak China Business Forum The students of FAST-NU Peshawar the forum and interacted with many campus visited Pak China Business Forum Chinese businessmen to gain knowledge 2015 organized by COMSATS Institute and information about different Chinese of Information Technology Islamabad and Pakistani products. The visit helped from March 27 to 30. The forum offered students to understand the contemporary an opportunity to businessmen of the market for products and especially the two countries to meet and share their Chinese business market. This event also business ideas in order to enhance bilateral provided an opportunity to our students to trade relations and boost economic get innovative ideas for their research and activities. Students of FAST-NU attended entrepreneurial activities.

Lahore campus holds CPD training Research The Electrical Engineering department and graduate students participated paper of FAST-NU Lahore campus organized in this hands-on training. Ms. Farah a workshop on “LaTeX” under the Nadeem, Lecturer, Electrical Engineering published Continuing Professional Development Department, Lahore campus, conducted (CPD) program on April 4, 2015. This was the workshop which was managed by Dr. Mr. Majid Khan, Assistant Professor, the first workshop since FAST-NU Lahore Saima Zafar, PEB coordinator, Lahore renewed its Professional Engineering Body campus. The participants were awarded Sciences and Humanities at Islamabad (PEB) status with Pakistan Engineering certificates along with CPD points which campus, has got his two research papers Council (PEC). Around 38 faculty members contribute to their PEC membership. published in highly reputed international journals named Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems and Neural Computing and Applications with the impact factor 0.986 and 1.763, respectively. The titles of papers were “A novel construction of substitution box with Zaslavskii chaotic map and symmetric group” and “Construction of S-box based on chaotic Boolean functions and its application in image encryption”. It is a privilege for FAST-NU Islamabad Campus that Mr. Majid Khan has established his place as the pioneer of implementing mathematics in the field of information hiding and security.

3 FAST-NU Lahore organizes SOFTEC‘ 15 FAST-NU Lahore campus organized comprising Muhammad Zeeshan, Wajiha competition, gaming (fifa) and engineering SOFTEC 15 on March 28 and 29. Around Hameed, and Sharjeel Ahmad Qureshi from project competition. 32 teams from different prestigious FAST-NU won the first prize at SOFTEC Team of Peshawar campus won 1st prize institutions including FAST-NU, Punjab 15. Their project was supervised by Ms. in web development category and achieved University, COMSATS, IQRA University, Saba Rasheed Malik, and Co-Supervised by fourth position in speed programming UCP and many others showcased their Dr. Usman Farrukh. Pixoshot is a research category. projects in software competition. Projects and development based project to automate varied across domains and technologies manual process in advertising agencies to with most notable projects on Kinect, verify TV ads. Domain of the project is AI, augmented reality, virtual reality, and image processing. computer vision. Each team was evaluated Meanwhile, thirty one students along by more than five judges from the industry. with two faculty members from FAST- The projects were also analyzed by sponsors, NU Peshawar campus took part in six software house representatives, and faculty competitions of SOFTEC 15 including members of FAST-NU Lahore campus. web development competition, graphic Final Year Project group “Pixoshot” design, programming competition, software

Conference paper Students visit Pakistan Engineering Council presented

The students of Batch 2010 and Batch Islamabad to study and analyze the fist on 2011 of Electrical Engineering Department Grid Solar Power Supply system installed at Dr. Summaira Sarfraz, Associate at Islamabad campus visited Pakistan PEC. They took keen interest in the system Professor, presented her research Engineering Council (PEC) Head Office in and were briefed about it by PEC officials. paper titled “Teachers’ and Students’ Perceptions of the Communicative Language Teaching Methodology in the CALL Environment: A Case Study” co- Guest lecture on cloud computing authored by Ms. Zahida Mansoor and Ms. Raheela Tariq, in the International A special guest lecture by Mr. Muhammad computing. Faculty members including Mr. GlobELT 2015 Conference under Rizwan Arshad, General Manager IT Nadeem Kafi, Mr. Nauman Atique and Mr. the banner of British Association for Services, IT Operations and GIS at Bilal Hayat Butt and students attended the Applied Linguistics (BAAL — UK) K-Electric, was arranged by FAST-NU session. arranged from April 16 to 19, 2015 in Karachi Main campus on March 10, 2015. Antalya, Turkey. BAAL Conference is a Mr. Rizwan, who holds more than eleven prestigious research forum in the area of years of experience in technical and Applied Linguistics. The paper being the first interdisciplinary research, discusses managerial skills in the field of Information the communicative language teaching Technology and expertise in enterprise methodology and language acquisition level infrastructure solutions, business process that identify the psychological analysis and core technologies, gave an factors responsible for forming different overview about the IT infrastructure for perceptions of the students and teachers SAP installation at the K-Electric Company. in a Computer Assisted Language As a technical expert, he discussed Learning (CALL) environment. The about the issues faced by IT department presentation was highly appreciated by during SAP’s initial deployment and post the participants of the conference. production. Furthermore, he also talked about K-Electric’s vision towards hybrid

Contact: Dr. M. Latif Virk, Registrar, National University of Computer & Emerging Sciences, FAST House, Rohtas Road, G-9/4, Islamabad. Email: [email protected] Phone: 051-2264629, Edited & designed by: H.A. Minhas

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