Chinese delegation visits IST

Islamabad: Institute of Space technology (IST), hosted a delegation of 80 guests including faculty and students from the member countries of Belt and Road Aerospace Innovation Alliance (BRAIA) like China, UK, Austria, Turkey, Malaysia and Pakistan here on Friday. IST is amongst the founding members of BRAIA, established on April 23, 2017 in Xi'an, China.

The Belt and Road Aerospace Innovation Alliance (BRAIA) was initiated by Northwestern Polytechnical University (NPU), China and Chinese Society of Astronautics (CSA). BRAIA is an international organization with NPU as its Permanent Secretariat, and is formed by universities, research institutes, and academic organizations, and enterprises mainly in the aerospace field. The mission of BRAIA is to enhance the international cooperation on aerospace technology and application. Its focus is to promote the substantial cooperation among BRAIA members in talent cultivation, scientific research, technology development and applications.

BRAIA now has members from different countries including Algeria, America, Australia, Bangladesh, Belgium, China and Egypt, France, Italy, Pakistan, Russia, Spain, Ukraine and United Kingdom etc.

The event was formally inaugurated and the distinguished guests were greeted by the Director IST, Dr. Najam Abbas. In his address he presented an overview of the IST and its achievements. He highlighted that IST is the only university in Pakistan that is determined to support National Space Program of Pakistan by aligning its curriculum and research endeavours according to emerging space paradigms. IST has the credit of designing, developing and launching the Pakistan’s first CubeSat in 2013 names as iCube-1with the contributions of its faculty and students.

IST is playing a vital role in Pakistan for creating awareness among general masses about peaceful uses and applications of space science, technology and its applications under the theme of Space Technology Education and Popularization.

He also mentioned some important collaborations of IST with BRAIA like the Sixth International Conference on Aerospace Science and Engineering (ICASE) to be held from November 12-14, 2019.

A keynote talk was given by Prof Dr. Syed Hossein Raza Hamdani on Aerospace Activities and High Performance Computing at IST. The Inaugural ceremony was followed by a sequence of IST labs visits and a Water Rocket development and launch workshop. The workshop was specially designed for the foreign students of BRAIA member states by Faaiz Jeelani. The visiting students took keen interest in the workshop by developing and launching water rockets.

The visit was concluded with an elegant ceremony in which Vice Chancellor IST Prof Dr. Syed Wilayat Husain presented certificates to the participants of Water Rocket development and launch workshop.