Rs1m grants awarded to 300 PhD fellows

ISLAMABAD: The National Academy of Higher Education (NAHE) has awarded a grant of up to Rs 1million to 300 fellows of the Higher Education Commission's (HEC) Interim Placement of Fresh PhDs (IPFP) program who applied for the Start-Up Research Grant Program (SRGP). The 300 fellows are from different academic backgrounds ranging from social sciences to life sciences across all provinces in Pakistan. SRGP is designed to assist the fresh PhD holders who are IPFP fellows, to establish research facilities upon joining higher education institutions as faculty members.

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The program enables the newly appointed PhD faculty to plan the setup of basic research infrastructure to start research activities without delay. It also helps to engage both the faculty and students in research through the provision of financial assistance and basic lab experimental facilities. Given the academic and regional diversity of successful SRGP applicants, NAHE designed and delivered a two week online capability building program (15 hours) that served as a refresher in fundamentals of project management for IPFP fellows, most of whom will be leading a project for the very first time.

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The course introduced the concept and six core elements of project management, challenges encountered in undertaking project management, the concept of the Work Breakdown Structure, and the application of project management and the Work Breakdown Structure techniques to academic research (and other) projects. This 15-hour course was delivered as a goodwill gesture by an internationally recognized team of instructors from Oxon Global (OxG) who are industry experts in Portfolio, Program and Project Management, OxG is a USA based consultancy firm with an international reach. All instructors hold the MSc Major Program Management from Said Business School, University of Oxford, UK.