Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Prof. Ahsan Iqbal inaugurated the Center for Mathematical Sciences along with a new high performance computing facility at Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Chairman PAEC Dr. Raja Ali Raza Anwar accompanied the minister during the visit and briefed him on the laboratories established under the Center for Mathematical Sciences project.
Speaking to media, Prof. Ahsan Iqbal expressed appreciation for the efforts made by PIEAS and PAEC in establishing the new centre and computing facility. He stated that it was important for universities to prioritise research programmes that contribute to transforming the national economy into a technology centered economy, adding that these facilities were originally approved under Vision 2025 during his earlier tenure. He emphasised that countries progressing in knowledge and technology excel on the global stage and said this development supports the broader URAAN Pakistan initiative aimed at strengthening research and development capacity. Chairman PAEC conveyed appreciation to the minister for his continued support in helping convert long term plans into functioning facilities.
The Center for Mathematical Sciences was approved through HEC by the special interest of Prof. Ahsan Iqbal in 2017 and includes several major facilities such as the high performance computing system and eight specialised laboratories associated with applied mathematical sciences and computational mathematics. A dedicated academic block and a researchers hostel have also been completed under the project. The new high performance computing infrastructure is designed to support universities and research organisations in meeting the requirements for advanced mathematical and applied research. It aims to develop a pipeline of highly trained professionals who can support technological self reliance and strengthen scientific capability across Pakistan.
Building on consistent support from the minister, PIEAS has now commissioned the Al Khwarizmi HPC Cluster, which is the most powerful CPU based computing system in Pakistan. With peak performance at 350 TFLOPs, the cluster includes 58 compute nodes comprising standard and large memory configurations, along with 5,104 CPU cores, 40 TB of memory and 2 petabytes of storage. All components are connected through InfiniBand NDR at 200 Gbps, enabling large scale scientific modelling, data analytics, AI workloads, simulations and other computationally demanding research activities. The cluster is intended to support universities, research institutions and industry across the country and reduce reliance on international computational resources. It will help researchers address national challenges including climate modelling, energy optimisation, genomics and AI development. Access to the system will be provided through a proposal driven process, supported by training for new users, and will operate in coordination with the broader HPC initiative being developed by HEC.
PIEAS continues to serve as the leading engineering university of Pakistan under the aegis of Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission. Established as a Reactor School in 1967, PIEAS was granted degree awarding status in 2000 and has since expanded into one of the country’s strongest centres for engineering and scientific education, now strengthened further with the addition of the Center for Mathematical Sciences and the Al Khwarizmi computing facility.
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