Dr. Shahid Ali at the Department of Physics, University of Peshawar (UoP) has been awarded EU funding under the Erasmus+ Program, the first project of its kind in KP. Erasmus+ is the European Union mobility program for education and training of Faculty and Students. Under this four-year (2017-2021) project, the students and teachers of the University of Nova Gorica, Slovenia and the UoP, Pakistan will share research facilities, and expertise. Three MPhil/PhD scholars will visit the University of Nova Gorica for their course work and joint research activities. Dr. Shahid Ali will also visit the Slovenian University for short term teaching and research training, with the goal to establish an advance optics / photonics laboratory at UoP in the field of Thermal Lens Spectroscopy / Microscopy. Students and Faculty from the Slovenian University will also visit UoP for research studies. The agreement signing event was attended by Prof. Yaseen Iqbal, Chairman, Department of Physics and Prof. Dr. Muhammad Abid, Dean, Faculty of Numerical & Physical Sciences.

While signing the agreement, Prof. Dr. Muhammad Asif Khan, Vice Chancellor, UoP congratulated and appreciated the efforts of Dr. Shahid Ali and re-iterated that such projects will lead to enhancement of our education standards and will encourage other hardworking talented faculty to explore such opportunities. The Vice Chancellor appreciated the outstanding research performance of the Materials Research Laboratory under the dynamic leadership of Professor Yaseen Iqbal which played a leading role in initiating and establishing a true research culture in Physical Sciences. He admired the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan for launching the Pakistan Program for Collaborative Research (PPCR), which materialized proposals for such funding.