ISLAMABAD, Nov 14: The Brookings Institution, a major US think-tank, has published a comprehensive document titled “Untapped Potential: US Science and Technology Cooperation with the Islamic World”.

The document has praised contributions of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) Chairman Prof Attaur Rahman.

The document states that the HEJ Research Institute of Chemical Sciences is run under the supervision of Prof Attaur Rahman, the highly-respected Pakistani chemist and science minister.

The institute is one of the few research institutions in the third world where students from western countries come for training in sciences. It awards almost 20 doctorates annually.

In the mid-1990s, the institute was selected by the Third World Academy of Sciences to be the first third world centre for science and technology in chemical sciences, which makes it a beacon in the developing world.

As an example of this, collaborating scientists have come to use the spectroscopic facilities from countries such as Bangladesh, Chile, Ethiopia, Egypt, Ghana, India, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Mongolia, Sri Lanka and Turkey.

The HEJ Research Institute also has cooperative agreements with organizations in a number of developed countries such as the United States, Germany, France and the United Kingdom.

The document highlights the pathetic state of science and technology in the Islamic countries. The document is very critical of the present situation of science and technology in Pakistan and states that research output from Pakistan is only two international articles for every million residents, which represents the weakest number in the Islamic World, including Sub-Saharan Africa.

Similarly, the document states that the number of scientists per million population in Pakistan coincides with the weaker Middle Eastern states, and is comparable to Sub-Saharan African countries.