Iran is an example of a country that has made considerable advances through education and training, despite international sanctions in almost all aspects of research during the past 30 years. Iran's university population swelled from 100,000 in 1979 to 2 million in 2006. Seventy percent of its science and engineering students are women. Iran's scientific progress is reported to be one of the fastest in the world. Iran has made great strides in different sectors, including aerospace, nuclear science, medical development, as well as stem cell and cloning research.
Considering the country's brain drain and its poor political relationship with the United States and some other Western countries, Iran's scientific community remains productive, even while economic sanctions make it difficult for universities to buy equipment or to send people to the United States to attend scientific meetings. Furthermore, Iran considers scientific backwardness, as one of the root causes of political and military bullying by developed countries over undeveloped states. After the Iranian Revolution, there have been efforts by the religious scholars to assimilate Islam with modern science and this is seen by some as the reason behind the recent successes of Iran to augment its scientific out put.
Budget
Iran's national science budget is about $900 million and it has not been subject to any significant increase since 15 years (2005). By early 2000, Iran allocated around 0.4% of its GDP to R&D, which ranks it "far behind industrialized societies" and the world average of 1.4%. By 2009 this ratio of research to GDP reached 0.87% and the set target is 2.5%. Yet Iran's government has devoted huge amounts of funds for research on high technologies such as nanotechnology, biotechnology, stem cell research and information technology (2008). Iranian Research Organization for Science and Technology and the National Research Institute for Science Policy are two of the main institutions, depending on the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology, in charge of establishing research policies at the state level. In 2006, Iranian government wiped out the financial debts of all universities in a bid to relieve their budget constraints.
Overview
Theoretical and computational sciences are highly developed in Iran. Theoretical physicists and chemists regularly publish works in high impact factor journals. Despite the limitations in funds, facilities, and international collaborations, Iranian scientists have been very productive in several experimental fields such as pharmacology, pharmaceutical chemistry, and organic and polymer chemistry. Iranian biophysicists, especially molecular biophysicists, have gained international reputations since the 1990s. High field nuclear magnetic resonance facility, microcalorimetry, circular dichroism, and instruments for single protein channel studies have been provided in Iran during the past two decades. Tissue engineering and research on biomaterials have just started to emerge in biophysics departments. According to the State Registration Organization of Deeds and Properties, a total of 9,570 national inventions was registered in Iran during 2008. Compared with the previous year, there was a 38-percent increase in the number of inventions registered by the organization.
Scientific collaboration
Iran annually hosts international science festivals. The International Kharazmi Festival in Basic Science and The Annual Razi Medical Sciences Research Festival promote original research in science, technology, and medicine in Iran.
Iranians welcome scientists from all over the world to Iran for a visit and participation in seminars or collaborations. Many Nobel laureates and influential scientists such as Bruce Alberts, F. Sherwood Rowland, Kurt Wüthrich, Stephen Hawking, and Pierre-Gilles de Gennes visited Iran after the revolution. Some universities also hosted American and European scientists as guest lecturers during recent decades.
Private sector
Parallel to academic research, several companies have been founded in Iran during last few decades. For example CinnaGen, established in 1992, is one of the pioneering biotechnology companies in the region. CinnaGen won Biotechnology Asia 2005 Innovation Awards due to its achievements and innovation in biotechnology research. In 2006 Parsé Semiconductor Co. announced it had designed and produced a 32 bit computer microprocessor inside the country for the first time. Software companies are growing rapidly. In CeBIT 2006, ten Iranian software companies introduced their products.
Bron: wikipedia
