PUA’s Faculty of Pharmacy relentlessly seeks to link its academic curricula to the labor market. Therefore, the Faculty’s freshman students paid a visit to ISIS Company, a subsidiary of SEKEM Holding Company, in Al-Sharkia Governorate. The visit aimed to link the courses taught in the Pharmacognosy and Natural Products Department to practical life and the labor market. Upon their arrival, the students were given a presentation to show the origins of the company and its role in community service, social support, and sustainable development. They also learned about its subsidiaries, such as Lotus for Preparing, Extracting and Drying Medicinal Plants, and Atos Pharmaceutical Industries.

After that, the students were divided into groups to tour the Company’s different compartments, which included the oil extraction unit, the honey and oils packaging unit, the food products unit, and the dates drying and packaging unit. This was followed by a visit to Atos where they were given a presentation about producing medicines from plant extracts, starting with collecting, drying and analyzing the plants, testing their purity levels, all the way to their final pharmaceutical form.

The students also visited the Company’s farm, which includes a large collection of different medicinal and aromatic plants with multiple medicinal uses. At the end of the visit, the students expressed how greatly they have benefited from such visit, hoping for more of such useful scientific trips that motivate them to achieve more success and progress in their education.