ISLAMABAD, Aug 23: The Higher Education Commission (HEC) has approved a Rs35 million project titled ‘Capacity Building in Computational Mathematics’ for Comsats Institute of Information Technology (CIIT).

The project is basically designed to support the degree programmes being offered in computational mathematics leading to four-year BS, MS and PhD programmes with special focus on research at higher level, an official statement said.

It would further create an academic environment promoting inquiry and critical thinking right from the undergraduate level to the graduate studies and postgraduate research.

Through the project, well-equipped labs would be set up in the institute with computational tools to help the use of sophisticated applications for teaching and research and support the ongoing programmes in mathematics.

The project would also be helpful in serving students from the entire country in general and Islamabad/Rawalpindi in particular.

The main objective of the project is to enhance cross- disciplinary linkages and the use of knowledge in basic sciences, particularly, in mathematics for understanding the advances in computing concepts as are applied in computer sciences, telecommunications and other areas.

The project also aims at providing a forum for promoting and strengthening linkages between basic and applied research, theoretical and experimental methods.

The project would also provide workforce to core application areas like finance, accounting, derivatives etc.

This would allow dissemination and cross-fertilization of new ideas, principles and techniques across the broad and inter- disciplinary front.

The project would be an important step towards helping the country in achieving its objective of developing human resources and promoting research activities in areas such as computational mathematics.

Under the chairmanship of the HEC executive director, Dr M. Akram Shaikh, the project was approved at a meeting of the Departmental Development Working Party (DDWP) of the HEC held recently at its campus in Islamabad and will be completed in a period of four years.