By Hina Kiyani
ISLAMABAD: The Higher Education Commission (HEC) Pakistan, through its NAHE, has launched the Global Scholars Network (GSN), an innovative digital platform designed to connect Pakistani diaspora scholars, researchers, professionals, and international experts with higher educations across Pakistan.
The GSN served as a centralized platform to facilitate meaningful academic collaboration between global experts and Pakistan’s higher education institutions. Through GSN, scholars and professionals could contribute their expertise on a voluntary basis by engaging in PhD supervision, collaborative research, guest lectures, workshops, faculty development programmes, curriculum enhancement, innovation initiatives, and industry-academia linkages, thereby strengthening the quality and global engagement of higher education in Pakistan. NAHE has invited Pakistani diaspora scholars, researchers, industry leaders, and international experts to join the Global this network and contribute to the advancement of higher Education in Pakistan. Interested expert may register through the official portal: https://gsn.hec.gov.pk The platform would enable experts to create comprehensive professional profiles highlighting their qualifications, research interests, publications, experience, and areas of specialization. Following verification and approval by HEC, these profiles would become accessible to universities across Pakistan, allowing institutions to identify and engage the most suitable experts for academic and research collaborations.
The Global Scholars Network introduced a structured, transparent, and technology-driven mechanism for academic engagement, replacing fragmented and manual processes with a unified national platform. Universities would be able to search for verified experts based on discipline, specialization, country, experience, and areas of expertise, submit collaboration requests, manage engagements, and monitor outcomes through an integrated digital system. Speaking about the initiative, Prof. Dr Niaz Ahmad Akhtar, Chairman HEC stated that this Network represented an important step toward the internationalization of Pakistan’s higher education sector by leveraging global knowledge, research collaborations, enhancing academic quality, and strengthening ties between Pakistani universities and world’s leading experts.
Dr Noor Amna Malik, Managing Director NAHE, explained that the platform has been designed with scalability, security, and transparency in mind, providing HEC with comprehensive dashboards and analytics to monitor national engagement, evaluate impact, and support evidence-based policymaking for the higher education sector.
She extended sincere appreciation to the Institute of Space Technology (IST) for its outstanding technical collaboration in the development of the Global Scholars Network. Special thanks was extended to Maj Gen Dr Syed Najeeb Ahmad (Retd), Vice Chancellor, IST, for his visionary leadership and unwavering support throughout the project.
HEC has also acknowledged the dedication and exceptional efforts of the IST Development Team, led by Mr. Rizwan Majeed, Director Information Technology, whose technical expertise and commitment played a pivotal role in successfully designing and developing this national-level platform.
