Department of Mineral Resources Engineering

The teaching faculty are being hired through a highly competitive process, involving active expert assessment by partner universities abroad. For the implementation of the Fachhochschule model of education, faculty members of the institute, with PhDs from premier foreign universities, will attend at the partner universities in Austria and China intensive training related to specific pedagogical and managerial skills.

The PAF-IAST programs are closely integrated with a parallel program for the development of technology-driven enterprises. For the holistic achievement of the concept, it is necessary to dovetail the institute’s educational infrastructure with a corresponding and compatible growth in the high-technology industry in tandem. To meet this critical need, PAF-IAST has a sound plan in place to build on its state-of-the-art campus an Innovation Technology Park. To boost innovation, every faculty member, trained in Austria and China, will be offered an average grant of USD 50,000 for developing new projects in the Innovation Park. A sum of 10 million USD has already been set aside for this purpose. The new projects, which will be implemented largely in collaboration with scientists of Austrian and Chinese partner universities, could potentially lead to joint patenting and industrial production.

To ensure quality, subject to the approval of accreditation bodies of Pakistan and the partner universities in Austria and China, double degrees will be awarded to students. The collaborator universities will be responsible to ensure that the teaching and research programs at PAF-IAST, in all essentials, are equivalent to theirs. Equivalence will be achieved by following identical syllabi, laboratory experiments, and assessment mechanisms. For maintenance of requisite standards, the accreditation agency in the partner country shall be involved to assess at regular intervals the quality of instruction at PAF-IAST. The equivalence of degrees will be the key determinant that the graduates of PAF-IAST have acquired education of international standards comparable to that of the graduates from the collaborator universities in Austria or China. In other words, there shall be no quality gap between the Pakistani graduate engineers and the engineers who graduated from the partner universities. Eventually, equivalence will be demonstrated, recognized, and accepted by all stakeholders in the program in those degrees of the collaborator institutions will be awardable to all such graduates as can qualify the academic standards set forth by the relevant accreditation councils.

Under the HRD program, during phases 1, 2, and 3, around 200 faculty members will be trained in Austria/China for periods of up to 6 months. Those holding M S/MPhil or equivalent degrees will be sent to technical universities in Austria and China on 4-year Ph.D. programs in relevant disciplines.