• Universities

The Shiraz University of Technology was established in Iran’s fifth largest city, the economic centre of its southern region, in 1968 as a monotechnic electronics industry university. Raised to full university status and given its current name as the second university in the Fars province in 2004, it has steadily grown and diversified from those beginnings to become the region’s first technological university, with a wide range of industrial links.Nowadays its 45-acre campus in the south of the city accommodates departments of chemistry, oil and gas engineering, computer engineering and information technology, materials science, civil and environmental engineering, mechanics and aerospace, physics, chemistry and mathematics as well as the founding electrical and electronic engineering department. Innovations in 2017 included the creation of an Internet of Things laboratory.Yet it remains a comparatively small and specialised institution, growing from 25 academic staff in 2004 to reach 100, teaching around 1,500 students, in 2018. Research activity has similarly grown from minimal levels in 2004 to the publication of more than 200 journal articles in 2016.Electronics and engineering remains the largest department, accounting for around one third of the academic staff, who teach three of the five undergraduate programmes, seven of the 31 masters courses and five of the 14 doctoral programmes offered by the institution. Among its staff is Taher Nikhnam, named in 2016 as one of the six most productive scientists in Iran on the basis of the publication of around 150 papers over the previous 10 years, and listed among the top seven the following year.