IRAN despite American and western countries illegal, inhumane prejudiced sanctions has made astonishing progress and exhibited stunning resilience. Iranian leadership is dedicated, committed, honest and sincere to its country and people. Late Ayat ullah Khumani filled a great spirit of patriotism , resistance and desire to develop their country in the hearts and minds of people of Iran.
Iran’s higher education sector has undergone tremendous growth in recent years. The country has seen a rapid expansion of the private sector and is now home to two of the ten largest universities in the world. Iran has a high literacy rate by regional standards, and in comparison to many other countries at similar levels of development, is a very educated society. The net enrollment rate at the elementary level (percentage of pupils in official school age group) was again high by regional standards is almost 100%.
Iran is the 9th country to put a domestically-built satellite into orbit using its own launcher and the sixth to send animals in space. Each year 20% of government and 5% of GDP goes to education, a higher rate than most other developing countries. 50% of education spending is allocated to secondary education and 21% of the annual state education budget is devoted to the provision of tertiary education. Iranian Education objectives are:-
1. Making the education more global in terms of knowledge.
2. Nurturing children who believe in the one God.
3. Providing a socially just education system.
4. Increasing the role of the family in the education system.
5. Increasing the efficiency of the education system.
6. Achieving the highest standard of education in the region
Iran has made considerable advances in science and technology through education and training, despite international sanctions in almost all aspects of research during in the past 30 years. Iran's university population swelled from 100,000 in 1979 to about 7 million in 2021.In recent years, the growth in Iran's scientific output is reported to be the fastest in the world. Throughout history, Iran was always a cradle of science, contributing to medicine, mathematics, astronomy and philosophy. Trying to revive the golden time of Iranian science, Iran's scientists now are cautiously reaching out to the world. Many individual Iranian scientists, along with the Iranian Academy of Medical Sciences and Academy of Sciences of Iran, are involved in this revival. The 9th century mathematician Muhammad Ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi created the logarithm table, developed algebra and expanded upon Persian and Indian arithmetic systems. His writings were translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona under the title: “The Jabro Muqabla” Robert of Chester also translated it under the title Liber algebras Al Moqabla. The works of Kharazmi "exercised a profound influence on the development of mathematical thought in the medieval West".
Iran’s Vision 2025 fixed a number of targets, including that of raising domestic expenditure on research and development to 4% of GDP by 2025. Iranian economy now is based on science and technology and is knowledge based. Iran currently stands in 18th place among the world’s top automobile manufacturers producing 880,997 vehicles by the end of 2020, according to the Organization International des Constructer’s d’ Automobile (OICA). Iran plans to produce 1.6 million vehicles in 2022.
Iranian scientists have gained great achievements in new found fields of stem cells, nanotechnology, space science, robotic etc. Today there are 737 innovative & creative companies, 118 innovation centers, 5,222 knowledge based companies, 49 technology accelerators which are the main driving force for the development of new technologies in Iran.
There are 321 companies active in Nanotechnology in Iran which has developed 834 Nano products. In a report called, towards year 2030 which is about the scientific advancements of countries. UNESCO indicated that Iran is the most advanced country in the Middle East and in the Muslim world in terms of nanotechnology. Surgical Robots are the best examples made by private company in Iran, which is ready to export to other countries and Indonesia is willing to purchase these robots.
Iranian women are playing magnificent role in Iran’s development and progress without sacrificing the Islamic values. Currently more than 84% of Iranian women are literate, 97% of Iranian girls have access to the education system. Employment rate of Iranian women is 80%. Of which 20,000 are university professors.
There are 270 hospitals active in the field of health tourism in Iran, which attract about 600,000 health tourists annually Iran is on the top position in terms of publishing articles on science.
There has been exponential growth in knowledge-based firms and startups in Iran. This trend is the result of heightened domestic demand, combined with multiplication of technology incubators and accelerations since the launch of first public centers in 2015. By 2020 49 innovation accelerations had been established with private equity and 113 innovation centers had been set up in partnership with science parks and major universities. Technology incubators have been providing entrepreneurs with co working spaces and mentoring on campus to help them launch their own start-ups. The government has been encouraging start-ups to diversify into knowledge-based fields. A series of laws and policies adopted since 2015 have removed barriers to competition and enhanced the financial support system for innovation. There are 528 biotech companies in Iran and share of knowledge based products’ exports has been increased phenomenally.
The Global Innovation Index (GII) ranks world economies according to their innovation capabilities. Consisting of roughly 80 indicators, grouped into innovation inputs and outputs, the GII aims to capture the multi-dimensional facets of innovation. The following table shows the rankings of Iran over the past three years, noting that data availability and changes to the GII model framework influence year-on-year comparisons of the GII rankings. The statistical confidence interval for the ranking of Iran in the GII 2021 is between ranks 57 and 65.
Year GII Innovation
input Innovation
Output
2021 60 86 44
2020 67 90 50
2019 61 86 87
• Iran performs better in innovation outputs than innovation inputs in 2021.
• This year Iran ranks 86th in innovation inputs, higher than last year but the same as 2019.
• As for innovation outputs, Iran ranks 44th. This position is higher than both 2020 and 2019.
Iran’s rank is 13th among the 34 upper middle-income group economies. Iran performs best in Knowledge and technology outputs and Creative outputs and its weakest performance is in Institutions. The seven GII pillar ranks for Iran 124 115 82 70 60 49 46 46 Institutions Business sophistication Market sophistication Infrastructure Global Innovation Index 2021 Human capital and research Knowledge and technology outputs Creative outputs.
The number of researchers per million (full time equivalent) in 2010 was 743 while in 2017 it has increased strongly to about 1,475 which includes 31.2% female researchers. About 19.2% of these researchers (FTE) are employed in business enterprises meanwhile 22.5% are employed in government sector. Maximum number of researchers (FTE) is employed in Higher education (57.2%). As discussed, Iran’s research strengths lie in biotechnology and nanotechnology. Research has successfully translated into commercialization and by 2018; there were 524 active biotech companies in Iran. Local pharmaceutical production has climbed rapidly and by 2019, Iran was able to produce 95% of medicines destined for the domestic market, including two-thirds of their active ingredients. An example is PersisGen, a biopharmaceutical company which designs, develops and produces biosimilars, vaccines and plasma derived products. It also specializes in regenerative medicine through the use of stem cells.
High Tech Exports
Year Exports in million USD
2011 711
2013 280.5
2015 277
GERD Iranian Research Area of Concentration
Area % of concentration
Engineering 28
Business, Admin and Law 27
Arts & Humanities 15
Health 7
ICTs 7
Social Science 7
Natural Science & wealth 6
Agriculture 3
Iran is the most prolific publisher of scientific papers in the OIC countries at present. The total number of research papers (articles only) published in Impact factor journals in recent years, according to the Web of Science, are depicted in accompanying figure. There is a remarkable increase in number of research publications from Iran in the field of science and technology. In 2016, the number of scientific research publications were 32,131 which increased by 47% to 47,288 in 2021. The number of highly cited papers by Iranian authors has risen from 78 in 2010, to 457 in 2018. In terms of broad fields of science, Iranians publications are largest in the field of health sciences (29%), followed by ross cutting technologies (15%), engineering (14%) and physics and chemistry each with 10% share. In recent years, Iran has published much more than world average on the topics of smart-grid technology, human resistance to antibiotics, desalination and national integrated water resource management. The volume of output was also above average for hydropower, wind turbine technologies and sustainable chemical waste management. In the global ranking of scientific papers, Iran ranked 15th in 2020. In the field of Nanotechnology scientific publications, Iran is among the top 5 countries in the world.
Iran’s Research Publications
Year No of Publications
2016 32,131
2017 35,169
2018 37,309
2019 42,556
2020 46,785
2021 47,288
Source: COMSAT report