ISLAMABAD, Sept 6: The Higher Education Commission (HEC) has approved a Rs30 million project to enhance the e-learning facilities at NWFP Agricultural University, Peshawar.

Under the project entitled “Computerization and Network Enhancement Programme”, all the required equipment will be installed in a period of one year, an official statement said.

The major objective of the project is to enhance the existing computerization and networking facilities at all faculties and the administrative units of the university. The project aims at developing infrastructure of e-offices, including local and wide area networks (LAN/WAN), which will be used for inter-office communication.

Under the project, a complete website of the university is to be constructed, which will contain commonly required information for the students, faculty, researchers and staff of the university.

This information will be disseminated in the form of education policies, rules and regulations, scholarships, news and press releases regarding the university through internal automation. All the employees, faculty members, researchers and students of affiliated institutions will be benefited through the project.

The HEC has decided to support two research studies to be conducted at Government College University, Lahore. The projects entitled “Production of Lipases and Lipase Medicated Synthesis of Valuable Esters” and “Process Development for the Production of Enzyme Invertase by Sacharmocyes Cerevisiae” will be conducted under the supervision of senior professors of the university.

Under the supervision of Dr M. Akram Kashmiri, chairman, Department of Chemistry, GC University, Lahore, the research study entitled “Production of Lipases and Lipase Medicated Synthesis of Valuable Esters”, costing Rs1,064,000, will be completed within two years.

The project will not only enable the PhD, MPhil and MSc students to learn most modern techniques of industrial biotechnology, but also equip the researchers for participation in industrial uplift of the country.

After its completion, the project will also provide a base to locally produce organic compounds that are being imported for pharmaceutical, food and cosmetic industries.

The second research project worth Rs1,433,000 will be supervised by Prof Ikramul Haq, Department of Botany.

The study will help the industry save national economy by using locally produced inverted syrup, which, at present, is imported from international market with very high price.