ICRL_KICS_UET Lahore, under the umbrella of National Center of Artificial Intelligence (NCAI) Organized and conducted a live webinar on September 03. Dr. Usman Ghani Khan (Associate Professor of CS Department and Principal Investigator of NCAI research program) was the key speaker. A number of professional and students attended live webinar.The main theme   of the webinar was “Research trends in Bioinformatics” In which Dr. Usman Ghani Khan cover almost each segment of the theme clearly, i.e. brief history of Bioinformatics lab at KICS, need of bioinformatics labs, national and international scenario, challenges in biological research, strategy to handle these challenges. During the webinar, a number of commercial products being developed at Bioinformatics labs were demonstrated.

According to Dr. Usman Ghani Khan, Bioinformatics lab at KICS U.E.T Lahore was established in 2010, by starter grant by H.E.C. Lab aim was to provide a national bioinformatics information network to cater the inter-disciplinary and collaborative research needs of the research industry. Under the Research and development domain of bioinformatics a number of research projects are going on. Other subdomain of research and development are;

• Bioinformatics
• Medical Imaging
• Brain Informatics

Where brain informatics is working on Neuro-science, bioinformatics is on genomics and proteomics while medical imaging is on image process. Further, all these domain and sub domains are integrated with Artificial Intelligence. Currently, following research projects are going on in all bioinformatics labs sub divisions integrated.

1. Virtual Brain
2. Modeling of Brain Data
3. Neuro-gaming
4. Neuro-gaming for ADHD patient
5. Brain region Segmentation
6. Brain Tumor Segmentation
7. Tumor Segmentation in liver
8. Pneumonia Identification
9. Abdominal Organs Segmentation
10. Spine curvature estimation
11. Detection of COVID-19
12. Breast Cancer Identification
13. Identification of Target drugs for cancer
14. Off-target binding profiles prediction
15. Genes-Disease Prediction
16. Biological data analysis
17. Identification of cancer subtypes
18. Multi-class cancer classification
19. Genomic Analysis and Phylodynamics
20. Protein-Protein Interaction
21. Protein Structure Visualization

All these projects and modules were explained in webinar. Products based on these research projects were also presented during the webinar. Highlighting products are BCI devices which will definitely bring revolution in the history of medical. Here, best example that was shown is Brain-controlled-Wheel-Chair.

To conclude, Bioinformatics lab at ICRL_UETL is working for last 10 years. A very strong and dedicative team at bioinformatics is available to handle the different algorithms of bioinformatics. Their understanding of biological and bioinformatics concept is very high. They are very good working and competitive hands in the field of bioinformatics. Our main strength is bioinformatics, brain informatics and drugs discovery. The idea behind online webinar is to spread knowledge, awareness and global research trends to compete the universal challenges.

Federal Minister for Energy, Mr. Omar Ayub Khan, Provincial Minister for Energy, Dr. Akhtar Malik, and Additional Chief Secretary Energy, Miss Irum Bukhari along with their team visited Centre for Energy Research and Development (CERAD) UET Kala Shah Kaku Campus. Vice-Chancellor UET, Prof. Dr. Syed Mansoor Sarwar, Director CERAD, Prof. Dr. Waqar Mahmood, MD PEECA, Adnan Mudassar welcomed the guests. They visited all the labs of the center, team members from different labs described them about the ongoing projects. They inspected the research and development work done there and appreciated the work of the researchers.

Federal Minister said that in the future this institute will become an even better institute and we have all the ingredients that can take it towards further development. While Provincial Minister said that the Federal Government and Punjab Government are working together on a one-point agenda to provide affordable electricity to the people. Director CERAD Dr. Waqar briefed the guests about the performance of the Center, ongoing projects, facilities, and future projects. A tree plantation drive was also conducted in which the guests along with Vice Chancellor, Director CERAD and other staff members planted trees by following Prime Minister’s “Plant for Pakistan” drive.