A DECADE OF EXCELLENCE: At SEECS we not only impart education, but also cultivate minds, Evolving from a tiny IT wing of NUST, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science SEECS, (formerly called NIIT) has grown into one of the most dynamic institutes of learning in Pakistan.
Starting from a two-room house in 1999, SEECS is now a full-fledged school at the beautiful NUST campus situated in the H-12 sector of Islamabad. A student entering the world of SEECS will immediately be immersed in its dynamic culture. Besides the rigorous academic grind, SEECS provides its students ample opportunities for research, innovation, entrepreneurship, and exchange visits.
SEECS' undergraduate and graduate programs are designed to equip the youth with the practical skills to enter the world of opportunities and capitalize on the huge technology market of the 21st century.
The degrees currently being offered at SEECS are:
-- Bachelors in Electrical Engineering (BEE)
-- Bachelors in Information & Communication Systems Engineering (BICSE)
-- Bachelors in Information Technology (BIT)
-- Bachelors in Software Engineering (BESE)
-- Masters in Electrical Engineering (MS EE)
-- Masters in Communication Systems Engineering(MS CSE)
-- Masters in Computer and Communication Security (MS CCS)
-- Masters in Information Technology (MSIT)
-- PhD in Electrical Engineering (PhD EE)
-- PhD in Information Technology (PhD IT)
Quality of instruction at SEECS is ensured at all levels by providing state-of-the-art infrastructure and truly-empowering academic environment. The school hosts high profile conferences, seminars, workshops. Also in place is a carefully-planned internship program. Progressive curriculum with a good component of humanities subjects, dedicated faculty and hi-tech laboratories are the hallmarks of academics at SEECS.
"We, at SEECS, believe that imparting education is a social responsibility."
EXYLENT (Exploring Young Leaders' Natural Talent) workshop is a regular feature at SEECS since 2008 for school and college-going students. During this 14-day program, the participants get to know and have a close feel of the fascinating world of robotics.
In EXYLENT, students are exposed to multiple disciplines thus helping them identify their area of interest, so as to enable them to choose a career path based on that interest.
The capable and dedicated faculty at SEECS strives to impart education in an interactive and engaging manner. Courses that make learning a delightful experience are conceived and offered. Recently a new course was initiated introducing robotics to the first year students. It imparted to students hands-on engineering experience of constructing robots.
The goal of the course is to impart education in a way to invoke interest in learning and develop the capacity of the participants to think of ways allowing application of the acquired knowledge.
"Focus of the teaching session should be both on imparting education and learning at the same time" Faculty members at SEECS are expected to write 5 to 6 research papers every year, publish at least one paper in a journal or conference with a rejection rate of more than 60%, and do meaningful projects collaborating with the industry. NUST takes pride in profitably harnessing its resources, and providing PhD opportunities to young faculty members on competitive basis.
"SEECS faculty members love challenges"
In the last three years, the three departments at SEECS have attracted funding of more than US $2.4 million from various local and international bodies including HEC and ICT R&D Fund, Pakistan; Nokia Research Center, China; and Korea Research Foundation, Korea.
The School is credited with over 350 research papers in International Journals and Conferences, in last three years. SEECS faculty has distinguished itself by publishing two books and three book chapters with some of the leading international publishers, also in last three years.
The quality of research at SEECS can be gauged by the fact that some of its publications have featured in the top conferences of the world in which previously no paper produced in South Asia could find space.
Faculty members regularly visit premier universities of the world like Michigan State University and Stanford University USA; University of Konstanz, Germany; KTH, Sweden to deliver talks and participate in collaborative research. SEECS graduates compete and stand out by winning fully-funded PhDs with high-stature international universities.
There are 20 research groups at SEECS working on different areas. Some of the projects that SEECS has been involved with include:
Jaroka Tele-healthcare: As per website, www.telehealthcare.org, Jaroka tele-healthcare project aims to provide quality healthcare to rural patients and disaster-hit communities by connecting them with Medical Specialists through Lady Health Workers equipped with mobile phones. Besides SEECS, the other stakeholders in this project include: APPNA from USA, ISIF Asia, USAID, UM Healthcare Trust in Mardan, Cogilent Solutions and Stanford University Reuters Vision Program.
MPJ-Express: Dr Aamir Shafi of SEECS is the co-designer and co-implementer of MPJ Express under a project funded by the British Council, Pakistan. (https://mpj-express.org). MPJ-Express is a Java message passing system that allows application developers to write and execute parallel applications for multi-core processors and compute clusters/clouds. MPJ Express is open-source software distributed under the MIT (a variant of LGPL) license.
MPJ Express is used by thousands of users globally, which include some leading international organisations and universities. SHARCNET, which is a consortium of Canadian academic institutions, adopted MPJ Express for parallelizing Java applications on their test bed.
Health Life Horizon (HLH): Healthcare industry is unique in nature. It involves extreme heterogeneity in its data and application. The healthcare community thus needs a solution that can hook up diverse applications to share data in an understandable format to achieve interoperability. Additionally, the solution should address the issues of prompt availability of information at the point of care, reducing medical errors and avoiding unnecessary medical procedures. With proprietary heterogeneous healthcare systems seamless integration has become a big challenge. HLH (Health Life Horizon: www.h17.seecs.edu.pk) is a software based solution indigenously designed to share healthcare related data seamlessly between organisations. This is done through HLH software which converts legacy data into a common global standard known as HL7 version 3. This project being implemented at SEECS is funded by the National ICT R&D Fund.
Collaborations with health-related organisations including Shaukat Khanum Memorial Trust Hospital have proven successful.
USB3.0IP Cores: Another ICT R&D funded project, NUST-SEECS & Whizz Silicon (USA) are developing a suite of low power, configurable and high speed USB 3.0 IP cores including IPs for USB 3.0 host controller, USB 3.0 device controller and USB 3.0 support functions to meet the needs of this "poised-to explode" market.
"The focus is on making a difference" SEECS encourages its students and faculty to take up entrepreneurial ventures. The School provides multi-dimensional support including office space, computing, internet and telephone facilities and local and international industrial linkages. The young entrepreneurs are provided the support of professional management consultants to advise them on how to take their company through the initial stages of development. These incubation facilities have enabled some professors and former students to set up companies at SEECS.
SWAM Technologies: It was the right time when SEECS alumnus Shahryar Khan boarded the ship to the future of handheld device software. He joined the first iPhone applications development class at Stanford University some two years ago and now he is the founding CEO of a company called SWAM Technologies, based at SEECS.
Epic Technologies is an embedded systems development company currently working on multi-projector display systems. Team members have also worked previously on digital video tagging for a Silicon Valley company. Baltoros is a set up by SEECS faculty member who has published in various international research papers in the field of wireless networks. His team works with Silicon Valley based companies, on a variety of challenging projects.
Crafty Pixels: With a natural talent for design, Faisal Zahid, SEECS alumnus has launched his web designing company and has worked on projects for clients in Silicon Valley, West Indies and South America. SEECS student teams have begun to take active part in Business Plan competitions and have volunteered to become part of Entrepreneurship Society at NUST. This early exposure of SEECS students will help them understand the knowledge value chain and prepare them for running business enterprises.
INDUSTRY LINKAGES Industry Academia linkages provide the backbone of research and development. Over the years, SEECS has been maturing its industry linkages through various methods which include:
Sponsored Labs and Research IBM has made $1 million worth of contribution to SEECS in setting up an Open Source Centre. CISCO and PTCL have co-sponsored a communications research lab.
Wi-tribe has set up a complete test bed in SEECS premises. BURAQ has set up a Centre for Excellence in Industrial Automation and is working on SCADA systems with SEECS. Buraq was initiated Final Year Projects for students, which hopefully will find their way in commercial implementations. Microsoft has an academic partnership with SEECS and has provided its development software free of charge.
Company set-ups in SEECS premises: Tech Access is a systems integration/solution provider and has set up a beautiful office in SEECS premises and will be working with the knowledge base available at SEECS.
TRG tech also has its presence in SEECS and is actively involved in finding the right students for internships and hiring. SPS based in USA has been working closely with SEECS in developing a team for IBM based products for implementation and support.
Corporate Advisory Council This council meets every six months and its attendance has grown from a handful of members a few years ago to 50 attendees all belonging to senior management of successful companies. Many projects and relationships have spawned from these meetings.
"There is never a dull moment at SEECS."SEECS students actively participate and organise various co-curricular and extra-curricular activities both locally and internationally. SEECS students have admirably fulfilled their social obligations by donating blood, undertaking recycling projects across campus and projecting students' semester projects to a larger audience. They take pride in doing what they believe.
SEECS ACM student chapter was rated as best student chapter in the world for two consecutive years. Students have represented SEECS and Pakistan at conferences in UK, Singapore and Norway, and have made their country proud by enhancing our national image. Successful country wide programs IEEE Olympiad and NASTEC have been hosted by the IEEE and ACM chapters.
Recently under the IAESTE (International Association for the Exchange of Students for Technical Experience) programs, seven students from six countries will be coming to SEECS for internships and research and five students from SEECS will be proceeding abroad in exchange. Moreover six students from SEECS will be participating in IAESTE JUMP conference which will be held in Oslo, Norway in September 2010.
Other active clubs of SEECS include NUST Volunteers Club, Literary Society, Sports and Tourism Society, Design and Display Society, Creative Arts Society and Events and Cultural Society.
Academics, Research, Innovation and Idea Generation, Entrepreneurship, Seminars, Conferences, Competitions, Semester Projects, Club activities, Publications, Local events, Global events, High level visits both local and international, Internships, Industry visits, Corporate Advisory Council meetings coupled with peer pressure at the student and faculty level and the usual administrative and management issues make life at SEECS one of the most vibrant of any institute in Pakistan.