Partners
The Institute of Management Sciences (IMSciences), Peshawar is a leading management school of Pakistan in the public sector. It was established in May 1995 with the main purpose to impart high quality education and training in the field of Business Administration/Management Studies and all allied disciplines. IMSciences has been pursuing its mission successfully and has an excellent reputation amongst the academic community and the business schools of the country. Initially, IMSciences offered only two programs with a limited number of students, totalling 180. During the last seven years, the Institute has introduced a number of new courses and programs with student strength progressing to more than 3500.
In recognition of its services and achievements the Government of KPK decided to develop it into a model Institution of the country and conferred an autonomous status placing it under a Board of Governors, headed by the Governor of the KP vide Ordinance No. XXXVI of 2002.
Its current status as one of the forerunners in providing management education has come about as a unique case in sustained development. This was made possible only by a dedicated effort and teamwork thus bringing IMSciences at par with many institutes of long standing repute in a relatively short period.
Located on the very edge of FATA, IMS understands the operating environment of KP better than any non-local entity, which places us in an ideal position to perform in KP and FATA. Given the challenging environment we find ourselves in, we consistently adapt according to the situation to perform and deliver successfully. This has been the hallmark of our success. As locals we know the language, the culture and its finer points, which give us an edge in working with local government officials, local social capital and other local entities. In many ways, these qualities have enabled us to re-engineer and re-invent quality education, conduct capacity building programs for the government of KP and other public and private sector institutions.
IMSciences is establishing links with international institutions of repute for development initiatives in KP. Towards this end it has worked with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), European Union (EU), Open Society Institute (OSI), World Bank, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES), J.E. Austin Associates, Inc., Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) are close associates of IMSciences.
Institute of Integrative Biosciences
The Institute of Integrative Biosciences is a cross-disciplinary life sciences institution that offers world-class degree programs and undertakes cutting-edge research in different areas and at the interfaces of biological sciences.
IIB aims to be a pioneering research and teaching institution in the life sciences sector that takes the lead in seeding the Pakistani biotech industry with new knowledge, skilled manpower and the most innovative startups.
IIB holds on to the following four values and aims to stay:
- Cross-disciplinary: Directly building on institutional strengths in engineering, research at IIB actively engages people from fields like engineering, computer science, materials and mathematics.
- Translational: Research at IIB has a strong applied and translational focus on real-world problems in energy, medicine, agriculture, livestock and the chemical industry.
- Entrepreneurial: Teaching and training at IIB has strong entrepreneurial components, which aims to cultivate innovators and leaders of tomorrow in the biotech sector.
- Flexible and Independent: IIB aspires not just to make our curriculum flexible, but also to foster a healthy environment for stimulating discussions and independent academic research.
The IIB curriculum is arguably the one of the most innovative BS and MS Biotechnology curricula in the country. It has a very strong emphasis on mathematics and computer science along with a renewed emphasis on humanities. This is accompanied with innovative and continuously evolving pedagogical interventions.
IIB currently has 16 postgraduate students and 89 undergraduate students, reading for the MS and BS programme in Biotechnology. IIB’s first batch of five Masters students graduated in 2017.
IIB has 9 full-time and 5 visiting faculty members that make a unique inter-disciplinary critical mass of instructors and researchers.
The IIB faculty is trained and has worked in world-class universities and institutes, nationally and internationally, before taking up their roles at the Institute in Peshawar. These include MIT, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, Wisconsin-Madison and Exeter.
Research at IIB encompasses areas including systems biology of infectious disease, synthetic biology and its industrial applications, nano-biotechnology-based therapeutics and diagnostics, and the molecular biology of archaea and bacterial phages. IIB faculty has published 12 research articles in the past 2 years.
IIB has a dedicated STEM outreach office that takes cutting-edge biology to schools and colleges across the country. IIB has reached 60+ schools and colleges across all 4 provinces reaching more than 20,000 students so far. IIB continuously innovates and develops new and engaging activities in and around biology.
IIB’s Dr Faisal Khan has developed and taught the popular final year undergraduate course on biotechnology entrepreneurship for the past four years, taking biology students through an experiential learning of entrepreneurship, churning out 35+ startups into the nascent ecosystem.
IIB in collaboration with IMS (Institute of Management Science, Peshawar – KP’s top ranking business school) has launched the Joint Center for Bioeconomy to map and measure the impact and potential of biotechnology on our economy.
IIB has designed and implemented the SynBioKP project in close collaboration with the Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. SynBioKP is an ADP scheme titled ‘Propagation of Synthetic Biology’ that has made news across the country for its outcomes, especially the award-winning teams of synthetic biology students (representing Pakistan for the first time) competing in the International Genetically Engineered Machines Competition in Boston. IGEM Peshawar was awarded a Bronze medal in 2016 and a Silver in 2017.
IIB is emerging as a key nucleus of the biotechnology and life sciences community in KP for its innovative community building events including the TheFutureIsNow! Roundtable that brought together 50+ professors from across the province, the Biotech Young Leaders Conference that brought together 200+ student leaders from around the province, TheFutureIsNowI Socials, the LabSkills Training Programme and the SynBio edition of Startup Weekend Peshawar.