Education aid: Pak-US research collaboration kicks off

COMSATS Institute of Information Technology (CIIT) and North Dakota State University (NDSU) Fargo, USA have entered a two-year collaborative research project entitled ‘A Hybrid Solar Water Heating System Using CO2 as Working Fluid.’ An important part of the three-fold mission of CIIT is research and development (R&D). Once completed and launched, the project will prove to be of immense importance to society. The system is being developed for Gilgit-Baltistan (G-B), which will work in both temperature extremities. The system will be ecologically safe from environmental side-effects like global warming or ozone depletion. It will also help in preserving local forestry by providing alternative source of energy for heating and cooling. The principal investigators for the project are Sumanthy Krishnan and Samee U Khan, from NDSU and Nasrullah Khan and Waqar H Bokhari, from CIIT. The collaboration was made possible by grants worth $296,000 from the US Department of State and Higher Education Commission of Pakistan under the Pakistan-US Science and Technology Cooperation Programme.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 13^th, 2011.