ISLAMABAD, March 12: The Higher Education Commission (HEC) plans a high speed dedicated National Research and Research Education Network (NREN) for universities and other academic sectors of the country.

The HEC spokesman on Wednesday said NREN would provide a fully integrated and dedicated communication infrastructure to students, faculty members and researchers using advance information and communication technologies.

He said it would help achieve true collaborative research, knowledge resources sharing and distance learning.

PERN2 is the next generation education and research network of the country. This project aims at providing gigabit connectivity to all the universities of higher learning with a multi-gigabit core network across the country.

Operation requirements for nationwide connectivity have been finalised with provision of establishing Gigabit Metro Network in all metropolitan cities of the country and long-haul Multi Gigabit connectivity of these metro networks and other PoPs.

PERN2 will fulfil the requirements of advance technologies and applications with proper security and management.

The HEC and the US National Science Foundation (NSF) are jointly funding a high performance research and education network connection to support Pakistan-US science and technology collaboration.

The project will connect the existing Pakistan and Research Education Network (PERN) and developing PERN2 to the global research and education network infrastructure.

This connection will be implemented by a joint purchase of capacity on an undersea cable system connecting PERN/PERN2 in Karachi to an international network connection point in Singapore.

The network connections will greatly assist the scientific collaborations being defined between the US and Pakistan by allowing more direct, high-speed access and communication among science and technology investigators and the worldwide resources.

One of the many examples involve high-speed access to the university of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to foster the ongoing collaborative research with COMSATS Institute of Information Technology on growth and characterisation of semiconductor and magnetic Nano crystals.

Similarly, this connection will allow more rapid access to data originating from the NSF funded Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) project to assist the efforts of the Earth Sciences and Seismology Working Group, which will assist researchers, both in Pakistan and US, understanding the earthquake geology of Pakistani Himalaya while characterising slip rates and investigating the recurrence of potentially devastating earthquakes.

FELLOWSHIP: Higher Education Commission (HEC) has invited applications from Pakistani and AJK nationals for Ph.D fellowships under a scholarship programme.

Students who adopted Quality Assurance Criteria for M.Phil and Ph.D level studies in any degree awarding institution will be eligible to apply for the scholarship.

The last date for submission of application is March 31. The applicants should have a degree with minimum 16 years of education with no 3rd Division or Grade D in his/her academic career.

Those who have already got scholarship cannot apply for this programme. Maximum age limit is 35 years on closing date of submission of the application. For people working on regular basis in public sector organizations maximum age is 40 years.

The applicants must qualify the local GRE (general) -type test with at least 50 Marks (or above) out of 100.—APP