EDVON was incubated at BIC NED UET Karachi, founded by one of the Electronic Engineering graduates of NEDUET, Mr. Muhammad Nabeel. EDVON offers coding, robotics, mental math and home tuition online 1:1 live classes for the kids ages 6-18. They are following the STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) philosophy in all our courses to equip the kids with 21st century technical and soft skills. EDVON also facilitate schools to integrate progression based STEAM curriculum in their academics. EDVON is currently working in USA, Canada, UK and in Pakistan and has more than 20 employees and clients in more than 10 countries.

During its incubation at BIC NEDUET, EDVON was able to generate a revenue of PKR 1.2 Million.

https://theedvolution.com/

NewVative Technologies got incubated at Business Incubation Center, Institute of Space Technology with a vision of providing state of the art tech solutions to the health care industry. The company creates IoT solutions mainly for health sector, including hospitals, pathology lab chains, blood banks, pharmacies and medical supply chain.

Currently NewVative Technologies is providing cold chain monitoring services to Blood Banks, Pathology Labs, Hospitals, Pharmacy chains and pharmaceutical factories. So far, the startup has been able to deploy more than 200 nodes across different customers including Shifa International, AFIT, Excel Labs, Chughtai Labs, Citilab, RMI Peshawar, Healthways Laboratories and Medizan Pharma.

For details: www.newvative.com

Nayab’s Rogue is a successful startup that graduated from Business Incubation Center, Institute of Management Sciences, Peshawar. The startup aims to provide opportunities to women interested in business and give them flight to be financially independent. To provide them with products and to give a roadmap to their ways of selling, operating, and marketing, thus increasing their performance and income.

https://nayabsrogue.com/

LCF 55 Vocational Training and access to decent work for women domestic workers, transgender individuals and persons with disabilities: Reflections on Gender, labor and equality for social inclusion of disadvantaged groups of Hazara Division
Dr. Abdul Majid – University of Haripur

Gender equality, social equality, and availability of decent work opportunities are among the fundamental rights of every human being. United Nation’s (UN) 2030 Agenda for sustainable development particularly emphasizes upon safeguarding these rights for all citizens. 

The primary objective of this project is to facilitate access to decent work by providing vocational and sensitization trainings to selected disadvantaged groups in Hazara Division. Qualitative ethnographic study and quantitative surveys performed to analyze the current social status and socio-economic problems of the selected groups. Customized trainings and sensitization programs designed and executed for each of the selected groups i.e. women domestic workers, transgender individuals, and persons with disability. The results of project will help in achieving sustainable development goals by ensuring decent work and social inclusion for the selected disadvantage groups in Hazara Division in particular and Pakistan in general.

GCF 543 Developing druggable CRISPR/Cas9 for treating ?-thalassemia and sickle cell anaemia
Dr. Afsar Ali Mian – Aga Khan University, Karachi

The study mainly involves drug/therapy development using novel molecular methods for two important blood disorders Thalassemia and Sickle Cell Anemia (SCD). Both diseases are a major health concern in Pakistan and pose great economic burden and treatment related complications for the patients and families.  
The study is at the early preclinical phase, where we have developed CRISPR/Cas9 molecules in our lab, and we are testing their efficacy in correcting gene mutations that cause thalassemia. We also aim at inducing the production of fetal hemoglobin which is normally produced in the early years of life as its production in thalassemic patients has been reported to be elevate clinical symptoms in thalassemic and SCD patients. We have already partially obtained some of the objectives of the project and we expect to obtain the complete results by the end of this year

GCF 63 Enhancement of global competitiveness of Pakistani textile export value-chains by capacity building and product diversification (KnowTex)

Dr. Yasir Nawab – NTU, Faisalabad

1. Extraction of Banana fibers from Agro waste for Textile Applications (Indigenous Banana Fiber).

About the Product: The spinnable banana fibers were extracted by using a newly developed method to make blended yarn for different textile applications. This fiber was previously wasted.

Novelty: A newly developed mechanochemical process was used to convert banana fibers to spinnable fibers. A patent application has been filed regarding the processing of banana fibers in IPO, Pakistan.

USP: Banana fiber is found in abundance around the world and also in Pakistan but it was wasted due to the unavailability of any process to convert it into spinnable form. The developed process can convert the banana fibers to spinnable form using a mechanochemical process. The banana fiber is agro-waste and will not use any additional arable land to grow the fibers.

Technological Readiness level: This technology is already licensed to Interloop.

Potential Impact: In Pakistan, more than 7–8-million-ton banana plant waste is produced annually, which can now be converted to textile fibers.

1. Extraction of Sisal Fiber and use in Textile Applications

About the Product: The spinnable sisal fibers were extracted by using a newly developed method to make blended yarn for different textile applications.

Novelty: This fiber is used for the first time in the world for textile applications (apparel).

USP: This fiber (raw form) is available in abundance in tropical and subtropical regions of the world. The use of these fibers in textiles will be a sustainable alternative to existing fibers. Further, this fiber is the world's most sustainable known natural fiber and is grown on marginal lands where no other crop can be grown.

Technological Readiness level: This technology is ready for commercialization and currently the process is in progress.

Potential Impact: Since this fiber can be grown on marginal lands and is also found in abundance in Africa so it will help with poverty alleviation.

1. IR Blocking Fabric

About the Product: The IR and thermal radiation shielding fabrics are excellent candidates for saving energy in maintaining the inner atmosphere of buildings as well as maintaining human body temperature. As these are thermal radiation-blocking fabrics while being transparent simultaneously, these are excellent materials used in the energy sector.

Novelty: IR and thermal shielding fabrics with high electrical conductivity are the novel candidates providing a temperature offset of upto 10 degrees Celsius.

USP: Excellent IR and thermal shielding functionalized fabrics with energy-saving technology and require less maintenance.

Technological Readiness level: This product is ready on a pilot scale.

Potential Impact: IR and thermal radiation blocking curtains will reduce the use of energy for cooling the buildings and inner body temperature.

1. Photocatalytically active Fabric

About the Product: Sunlight-driven photocatalytically active fabrics are the emerging field in environmental remediation as an excellent replacement for detergents. This fabric owes self-cleaning activity under sunlight due to the binding of strong photocatalysts on the fabric's surface.

Novelty: The durability of photocatalytically active fabric remains a real bottleneck for the researcher in the NPs adsorbed self-cleaning fabrics. Therefore, a novel technology using GPTS as a coupling agent is proposed and found potential role in the durability of fabrics. 

USP: Highly durable self-cleaning fabrics with improved antibacterial properties.

Technological Readiness level: This product has been prepared on a Pilot scale.

Potential Impact: As the fabric owes self-cleaning performance, so they can reduce the use of detergent in the laundry which contains potential hazardous compounds.

1. Superhydrophobic Fabric

About the Product: Superhydrophobic fabrics are excellent water-repellent fabrics with a water contact angle of more than 150 degrees. These fabrics are intended to provide a dry barrier while withstanding moisture.

Novelty: This fabric has been prepared using eco-friendly technology as fluorinated graphene oxide has been used along with other hydrophobicity imparting materials. Besides, the new combination of binders/coupling agents imparts high durability to the fabrics. 

USP: Fabrics are finished with environmentally friendly and high-performance water-repellent technology.

Technological Readiness level: The product is ready on a lab scale.

Potential Impact: The previously available water replant fluorochemicals are dangerous so using fluorinated GO as an eco-friendly replacement is advantageous technology in terms of environmental remediation.

1. Knit-like woven fabrics

About the product: Strength of the woven structure and the flexibility of the knitted structure is integrated to achieve high comfort, without compromising the performance.

Novelty: Unlike conventional woven fabric, there is lateral crimping in knit-like woven fabric structure, which is responsible for its high strain at initial low stresses. This low modulus nature of knit-like woven fabric provides higher freedom of motion and associated comfort with respect to fit. These fabrics are developed for the first time in the world.

USP: Proposed knit-like woven fabric adds mechanical stretch along the warp direction, without using elastane materials in the warp direction.

Technological Readiness level: Developed at pilot scale.

Potential impact: knit-like-woven fabric structure is ideally required for the work wear application, where both high strength and freedom of movement are essentially required. Currently, this task is achieved by adding elastane (non-biodegradable) materials in the warp, which is not eco-friendly and cost-effective.

1. Ceramic Coated Puncture resistance Gloves

About the product: Development of a low-cost puncture-resistant glove with novel chemicals and coating.

Novelty: The developed product is a low-cost alternative to already available solutions in the market. This product is 4-5 times cheaper than the existing product and more comfortable.

USP: This product is low-cost, comfortable, and already got the highest certification level (05) from SATRA, UK. The supply chain of this product is already complete and can be commercialized without any additional infrastructure.

Technological Readiness level:  This technology is ready to commercialize and we are in the process of technology licensing.

Potential impact: This technology can be used in several applications (puncture resistance, abrasion resistance, and cut resistance) and we can earn considerable revenue by exporting this.

TTSF 84 Security and Threat Intelligence Platform for Capital Market of Pakistan

Muhammad Asad Arfeen – NED-UET, Karachi

Cyber security is now a compulsory requirement to protect all businesses and operations of any corporate and national digital infrastructure. Due to digital transformation, such infrastructure is now completely IT based and interconnected via LAN and WAN links. Real time health monitoring and anomaly detection of all IT assets in such a huge  system is a challenging task due to enormous amount of event data which need to be carefully assessed in real time to uncover any trend or hidden cyber threat. 
Security & Threat Intelligence Platform (STIP) is an industry grade security information and event management (SIEM) solution. STIP collects real time event data from various security logs within the organization, such as those for enterprise security controls, operating systems, and applications. STIP is necessary platform for complete visibility of what’s going on inside an organization and protects from internal and external cyber threats. STIP is extremely useful tool for business continuity for any organization.

TTSF 74 High resolution flexible time-temperature indicator (FTTI) for food quality control
Dr. Ali Turab Jafry – GIK, Topi

Time temperature indicator (TTI) is a device which monitors the shelf life of perishable food products from cold storage to consumption.  Globally about one-third of fresh fruits and vegetables (FFVs) are discarded as waste because their quality dropped during transit. In most of the cases, these losses happen because of non-optimized handling during supply chain and no sensing device present to monitor the quality of food being transported from production all the way to the consumer. 

Therefore, we developed a high-resolution flexible time temperature indicator (FTTI) for food quality control by using CO2 laser cutting and thermal press machine to cut and laminate different layers of thermoplastic films. We also incorporated an innovative and easy actuating mechanism made of thin PET film to pull and actuate the TTI. Three fatty acids like oleic, octanoic and decanoic acid are used as working fluids for different testing temperatures of 5°C, 15°C and 30°C, respectively. To optimize or make a homogenous flow, the device has been developed using a two-dimensional fan shaped series of profiles which help linearize the timescale for a better readability by the consumer. The important features of this device or indicator are its simplicity, low cost, flexibility, and reliability. FTTI’s application to food industry include dairy items such eggs, frozen items such as meat, as well as biomedical products such as vaccines which need to be kept at a safe temperature.

TTSF 130 Designing of a Versatile Prototype based on the application of Ion Exchange Membranes, for Efficient and Cost Effective Recycling of Industrial Waste.

Dr. Shazia  Perveen – NED-UET, Karachi

With energy cost rising and environmental problems worsening, the challenge currently lies in the development of cost effective and efficient technologies for waste treatment and waste recycling by sustainable resources. Ion exchange membranes (IEMs) have attracted much attention to achieve the energy task and to alleviate environment related issues by its wide-ranging applications from pharmaceuticals to waste treatment, desalination to water purification and energy production to energy storage. These membranes have found little application in Pakistan due to its high cost. Most of the researcher imports these membranes from China or Korea including the charges of shipping, Freight and custom duties. 

Current proposal is designed to transfer this developed technological research to industry and to connect the stated application of IEMs with sustainable development goals. For this purpose, a small membrane stack model, based on the concept of Diffusion Dialysis (DD) and Electrodialysis (ED), has been designed and prepared at R&D sector for specific application of waste treatment and waste recycling. This stack has been tested for recovery of acids and bases by waste recycling process. After testing of small stack model, R & D will design the larger stack and prototype device in order to overcome the challenges in scaling up the stack. 

TTSF 22 Development, production and commercialization of Aleosin-based wound healing scaffold
Dr. Hussain Mustatab Wahedi – NUST

Dr. Hussain Mustatab Wahedi and his research team developed a novel wound dressing to accelerate wound healing at Biological Sciences Lab, National University of Medical Sciences, under the TTSF funding of HEC, Pakistan.

The key innovation in the scaffold is the presence of a natural wound-healing substance. The drug ‘aloesin’ is a natural compound found in the aloe Vera plant which is used in skin protection and treatment worldwide.

The second feature of the scaffold that makes it superior to available products is the slow and sustained release of the drug molecule leading to the prolonged availability of the drug at the wound site. In vitro drug release behaviour of Aloesin based scaffold was assessed in phosphate buffered saline solution. The percentage of aloesin released from the scaffold released is shown in Figure 3. Aloesin release from scaffold started with initial burst release profile, followed by sustained release profile up to 24 h.

TTSF 45 Industrial Scale Development of Waterproof Cum Heat Resistant, Montmorillonite Clay Modified High-pressure Plywood Composite (NustoPak Wood) from Renewable-Nonedible Agricultural Wastes
Dr. Azhar Mahmood – NUST

In this project, a modified montmorillonite clay resin was synthesized on pilot scale plant by using furfural extracted from Saccharum munja plant waste. Resultant resin was mixed with plant leftover material and pressed at high temperature to manufacture high pressure wood composite. In this project we replaced carcinogenic formaldehyde by green chemical furfural to make phenol-furfural resin. Phenol-furfural resin has no carcinogenic effects and is adhesive like phenol-formaldehyde. The project is innovative due to following reasons.

i.    An efficient extraction of furfural, a green chemical, from renewable plant waste feedstock 
ii.    Extracted furfural is used for the synthesize of clay modified phenol-furfural green resin which is further used as binder in the manufacturing of plywood/wood composite.
iii.    Residual plant waste after extraction is used as filler so no waste material is leftover.
iv.    Resultant plywood prototype product has shown good fire-resistant features. 

TTSF 15 Large-scale production of indigenously developed pellet biofuel in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.

Dr. Majid Hussain – University of Haripur, Haripur

We have developed prototypes of wood pellets biofuel in our Industrial Forestry and Wood Technology Lab under the TTSF-HEC-15 project and completed the first year of the project successfully and got 2nd installment for 2nd year of this project. We developed pellets biofuel from 25 wood species and agricultural residues in our Lab, now we have installed a Wood Pellet Plant at the University of Haripur which produces wood pellets biofuel for large-scale commercialization in KPK, especially in Haripur and surrounding areas. Last year, 3 M.Phil Forestry scholars and one BS research scholar worked on this project as Research Assistants and completed their M.Phil and BS degrees successfully. Three research papers are submitted to different journals from their work done in this project. Our developed prototype product "Wood Pellets Biofuel" is also shortlisted for exhibition and poster presentation at Lahore Science Mela organized by Al-Khwarizmi Science Society, Pakistan, the event will be held in Lahore on 29-30th October 2022. Because our developed wood pellets biofuel has 600 kcal more energy contents than conventional round wood/logs, it's cost-effective and can easily be transported and stored.

TTSF 77 Transfer of a sustainable floating treatment wetlands technology to sectoral partner for the treatment and reuse of wastewater
Dr. Muhammad  Afzal – Pakistan Institute of Engineering & Applied Sciences, Islamabad (PIEAS)

We have developed an innovative, sustainable and environment friendly "floating treatment wetlands" technology for the treatment and reuse of wastewater. Until now, 100,000 sq ft floating  wetlands has been applied at more than 20 sites in Pakistan and has treated about 800 million cubic meter wastewater.

Recently, this work has won Nature Research Award for driving Global Impact with 10,000 US$ cash prize, and 1st Prize (RS. 100,000) as an innovative technology in All Pakistan Expo 2022

-    PPT and video has also been received

Development and Upscaling of Combined Adsorption Distillation Technique for Saline-Water Treatment and Fresh Water Production on Industrial-Scale (CAD-WATER)

Dr. Tanveer Ahmed Gadhi – Mehran University of Engineering & Technology, Jamshoro

Research Problem/Issue (brief Research issue)

• To enhance water scarcity resilience with the upscaling, development, validation, and transfer of combined adsorption distillation (CAD) technique to treat saline water and produce freshwater at the industrial scale.
• To Utilize waste heat generated in industries (i.e. power engines, boilers) coupled with Adsorptive Distillation for obtaining clean water.

Solution / Results

• Upscaling and standardization of adsorbent-composite and pilot-reactor.
• Testing of adsorbent-composite at applied distillation/evaporation.
• Detailed water quality analysis for controlling and standardizing the CAD upscaling.
• Upscaling and optimization of the water vaporization, adsorption, and condensation rates at varying conditions.

Project Principal Investigator

DR. TANVEER AHMED GADHI Assistant Professor,
USPCAS-W, MUET, Jamshoro
Contact: 0332 2738613
mail: tanveer.uspcasw@admin.muet.edu.pk

Project Team: 
Dr: Rasool Bux Mahar 
Dr. Najma Memon 
Dr. Imran Nazir
Mr. Abdul Manan 
Mr. Tayyab Ahmed 
Ms. Sanam Bhatti 
Mr. Sikandar Lodhi

KYTOSTAT -Converting inexpensive indigenous chitosan to high value commercial pro-angiogenic tissue engineered skin grafts for burn patients

Principal Investigator: Dr. Muhammad Yar, from IRCBM, COMSATS
University, Lahore
Industry Partner: Cotton Craft Pvt Ltd, Lahore.

According to survey in Pakistan the mortality rate is more than 98% for burn patients with more than 50% total body surface area. Also 10%
deaths occur due to blood loss out of 6% of all deaths caused by injuries. Where in middle income countries like Pakistan, the cure and medication to severe wounds and burns is expensive and out of reach of 70% of population. To meet the demand the advance synthetic skin and related items are being importing from international market on high cost which is a burden on Pakistan economy. To overcome the cost and
availability of advance wound care products, we proposed the development of advance wound care products based on indigenous source chitosan, which is easy to extract from waste sea sources. Chitosan is biodegradable, biocompatible, and anti-infectious in nature. The presence
of positive charges in its structure makes it attractive towards blood cells and involves it in angiogenesis and hemostasis. Chitosan was isolated from crustacean’s source (Shrimps and crabs). In current project, one product is synthetic proangiogenic skin graft. This graft was prepared from water soluble polymer obtained as a result of simple chemical transformation in chitosan. It supported new blood vessel formation and also showed ability to carry thyroxin as a proangiogenic agent. Second product under this project is chitosan based haemostatic gauzes. Instant blood clotting is the basic need of today’s era, as death rate due to blood loss during accidents and war is increasing. Third prototype is an advance wound dressing used for partial thickness burn and chronic wounds. It has similar potential effectiveness in diabetic patients and venous foot ulcers. It has ability to form blood vessels at burn or wounded sites. It has power to absorb the extra body fluids and provide moist environment and proper gaseous exchange at the effected site. Enhance blood vessels growth and provide hemostatic effect. It has ability to degrade at the effected site and reduces pain. The commercialization of all these products is being planned by partner Industry (Cotton Craft PVT LTD), they have submitted dossier to Drug Regulatory Authority (DRAP) of Pakistan for necessary approvals and registration. All the prototypes were completely and structurally characterized using FTIR, and SEM; for cytotoxicity cells were cultured and for wound healing
full thickness rat model was used.

Principal Investigator: Dr. M. A. Irfan, Mechanical Engineering, UET Peshawar CIBEA is an HEC funded Technology Development Fund Project which turn out to be a successful faculty led spin-off in UET Peshawar. It has invested in state-of-the-art Energy Audit Equipment. CIBEA helps industries save on their energy bills. CIBEA is led by a US Certified Energy Manager (CEM), with over 10 years of experience in Energy Audits. Our qualified team of MSc Electrical and MSc Thermal Engineers has experience in conducting energy audits in Lahore, KP, and Baluchistan.
CIBEA has an expert team of consulting engineers who can conduct industrial and building energy audits, conduct carbon footprint studies for the industry and buildings, advice on reducing energy and carbon footprint, help in ISO 50001 implementation, conduct Building Information Modeling (BIM), design low-cost energy-efficient buildings, conduct EDGE certification of buildings and LEED certification of buildings.

Our Objectives are:
1. Reducing Energy Consumption by Energy Audits.
2. Human Resource Development in Energy Audits.
3. Developing Database of Industrial and Building Energy Consumption.
4. Creating Awareness about Energy Conservation and Energy Efficiency.
5. Reducing Carbon-footprints through energy efficiency and conservation.

Some of our recent projects include, “Industrial Decarbonization Study for Pakistan" funded by WorldBank, in Collaboration with OPM and RICARDO, “Energy Assessment of Cogeneration based Gasfired Captive Power Plants (CPPs)" funded by NEECA, and “Implementation of ISO 50001 in selected industries of KP” funded by UNIDO, in Collaboration with CEMS.

Aawaz: Language Learning for Non-Verbal Children with Intellectual Disabilitie Discovery AAC application developed under project Aawaz is the first version of the next generation AAC software based on Natural Language Understanding and Generation. An AAC software deployed on a handheld device (touch screen devices such as tablets) converts input by user through word icons into synthetic voice. Most of the children with Intellectual Disability, Autism, and Cerebral Palsy are categorized as visual learners. They do not recognize alphabets, but they do recognize pictures of words represented through icons. This selection of word icons is than converted into synthetic voice output for the listeners.