ISLAMABAD, Nov 18 (APP): Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives, Prof. Ahsan Iqbal, on Tuesday inaugurated the Center for Mathematical Sciences (CMS) along with a state-of-the-art High-Performance Computing (HPC) facility at the Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences (PIEAS).
The PAEC Chairman, Dr. Raja Ali Raza Anwar, accompanied the minister during the visit and briefed him on the newly established CMS laboratories and research infrastructure.
Speaking to the media, Prof. Ahsan Iqbal said he was pleased to inaugurate the facilities and congratulated both PIEAS and the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission for completing the project.
“It is time we launch initiatives that strengthen our country’s scientific stature instead of prioritising individual academic scores. Universities must introduce research programmes that help transition Pakistan into a technology-driven economy,” he remarked.
He added that the CMS and HPC initiatives were conceived under Vision 2025 and approved in 2017. Countries that lead in knowledge and technology, he said, are the ones that progress, and these additions align with the government’s URAAN Pakistan initiative, which aims to enhance national research capacity and cultivate top-tier development infrastructure.
PAEC Chairman Dr. Anwar expressed gratitude to the federal minister for his support and vision, noting that his guidance made it possible to bring the project to fruition.
The Center for Mathematical Sciences, approved through the Higher Education Commission (HEC) in 2017 during Prof. Ahsan Iqbal’s previous tenure, consists of a dedicated academic block, eight specialised laboratories in applied mathematical and computational sciences, and a researchers’ hostel. The facility aims to cultivate high-level expertise and advance national technological self-reliance.
As part of the project, PIEAS recently commissioned the Al-Khwarizmi HPC Cluster, Pakistan’s most powerful CPU-based supercomputing system. With a peak performance of 350 TFLOPs, the cluster features:
58 compute nodes (48 standard, 10 large-memory)
5,104 CPU cores
40 TB RAM
2 PB (2048 TB) storage
InfiniBand NDR network interconnect at 200 Gbps
The infrastructure will support artificial intelligence, scientific modelling, big data analytics, simulations, and compute-intensive research across Pakistan. Access will be provided on a proposal-based system, with dedicated training and user support. The facility will integrate with HEC’s national HPC framework, reducing dependence on foreign computing resources and empowering local researchers to address national challenges in fields such as climate science, energy, genomics, cybersecurity and advanced engineering.
PIEAS, a leading national engineering university operating under PAEC, was established in 1967 as the “Reactor School” and became a degree-awarding institution in 2000.
