The Promotion of Education in Pakistan (PEP) Foundation/Trust is establishing a National Institute of Excellence in Neuroscience (NIEN) at the campus of University of Karachi. NIEN will be the first highly developed institute for neuroscience in Pakistan accessible to students from economically disadvantaged families. It will offer undergraduate (four years) and graduate degree programmes in neuroscience that will cover all aspects of neuroscience, including molecular and cellular neurobiology, neurochemistry, neuropharmacology, neuroanatomy, behavioural neuroscience, and psychobiology.

The classes of first group will start in August this year. The faculties for the institute are being employed from around the world under the Higher Education Commission's Foreign Visiting Faculty Programme.

The National Institute of Excellence in Neuroscience is the first institute of the National Institutes of Excellence in Higher Education (NIEHE)/National University of Pakistan (NUP), a project of PEP Foundation/Trust.

The PEP Foundation/Trust is a non-profit organisation working for development of accessible quality of higher education in Pakistan. It was founded by two world famous Alzheimer disease scientists and professors at New York University, USA, Dr Khalid Iqbal and Dr Inge Grundke Iqbal, in December 1994.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2005