2,764 graduates awarded degrees at 12 th UVAS Convocation

The 12th Convocation of the University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences Lahore was held here on Monday.

Chancellor/ Governor Punjab Ch Muhammad Sarwar presided over the convocation while Minister for Livestock & Dairy Development Punjab Sardar Hasnain Bahadur Dareshak, Secretary Livestock Punjab Naveed Haider Sherazi, faculty members, industrialists from dairy, poultry and pharma industries were present. Total 2,764 graduates were conferred degrees and 131 position-holders awarded medals. Out of the graduating students, 73 were PhDs, 732 MPhil, 477 DVMs, 847 BS (Hons), 161 Pharm-D, 57 Doctors of Nutrition and Dietetics, 84 MBAs and 79 BBA (Hons).

Addressing the convocation, Governor Ch Muhammad Sarwar congratulated the graduating students and urged them to work hard, serve humanity, be entrepreneurs and job-providers instead of becoming seeking-seekers. He lauded the progress achieved by the UVAS in the world’s universities ranking and especially in its vital role in fight against COVID-19 pandemic. He urged the university scientists to play their role in addressing the challenge of food security and malnutrition in the country by contributing to enhancing livestock productivity. Earlier, the Chancellor along with the Vice-Chancellor gave away degrees to PhD scholars and medals to the position-winning graduates.
Presenting the welcome address, Vice-Chancellor Nasim Ahmad spoke about the academics, research, development, extension programmes, various initiatives and community services of the university.

He said that with a history of 139 years of excellence, the UVAS is now among top Asian universities as per The Higher Education and QS World Universities Rankings. UVAS got 4th position among public sector universities of Pakistan in the Higher Education Commission Sports Ranking, Prof Nasim said that UVAS is a research intensive university and is currently executing 102 research projects worth over Rs 1,307 million, of which five projects are foreign funded of worth Rs331 million. During the pandemic of COVID-19, UVAS helped the government by testing more than 600,000 samples of suspected COVID patients at its BSL-3 Lab. UVAS is also working on COVID-19 vaccine production which is in final phase.

He said that the university produced four calves through IVF technique in Sahiwal cattle which is a big breakthrough. He said that UVAS is executing five development projects worth Rs.5.7 billion funded by the federal and provincial governments. Establishment of a subcampus at Chichawatni is one of the new initiatives of the UVAS, he said.

Prof Nasim said that the UVAS encourages its students by providing them incentives in shape of merit and need based scholarships. The university awarded 1,434 scholarships of Rs 104 million during the last year, he added.