– Terrence Ward, Author of Searching for Hassan

The ‘secret’ only dawned on the leaders at Stanford University as they once realised that a large number of foreign students were beginning to do really well on some very hard PhD qualifying exams. Examining a bit further, they noticed that the disproportionate number of these students came not from one country in Asia but from a single university – The Sharif University of Technology in Tehran.

For Sharif University, this has been a culmination of several decades of hard work and the realisation of a dream from 50 years ago.

Creme de la creme

Sharif attracts, literally, the cream of Iranian society each year. Every year, 1.5 million young Iranians take a national university entrance exam, or “concours.” Of the 500,000 who pass and are entitled to free higher education, only the top 800 can attend Sharif – that is just over 5 students out of every 10,000. (1) This is a remarkable level of selectivity. Compare that with MIT, for instance, where the acceptance rate at the undergraduate level is about 8-10% of those who apply and one could begin to get a sense of whats happening here.

“The selection process [gives] universities like Sharif the smartest, most motivated and hardworking students” in the country, says Mohammad Mansouri, a Sharif alum (’97) who is now a professor in New York. (1)

Take into the account the fact that Iran’s education system at the school and college level is already quite competitive and, unlike many other countries, most Iranian parents prefer to send their sons and daughters to study sciences and engineering rather than law or business, for instance, adds all the more rigor to this already airtight process.

One testament of the Iranian schools system’s emphasis on STEM is the fact that Iran has become a major player in the international Science Olympiads taking home trophies in physics, mathematics, chemistry and robotics. As a testament to this newfound success, the Iranian city of Isfahan recently hosted the International Physics and Mathematics Olympiads —an honor no other Middle Eastern country has enjoyed.

No wonder then that Sharif University has produced some remarkably brilliant and prolific alums. Maryam Mirzakhani, the first woman ever to have won the Fields Medal of Mathematics – often referred to as the Nobel Prize of Mathematics, but just an order of magnitude more prestigious – is an alum of Sharif University. Others include Behzad Razavi, Professor of Electronics at UCLA, Mohammad Shahidehpour, the Associate VP of Research at Illinois Institute of Technology, and Mehdi Setareh, the professor of architecture at Virginia Tech. (2)

In addition to those who have excelled in science and technology, Sharif also has been an alma mater to several political, social, and cultural figures such as Ali Akbar Salehi (a former President of the University and a Vice President of Iran), Morteza Alviri, former Mayor of Tehran, Ali Larijani, speaker of Majlis and former presidential candidate, Elshan Moradi (Chess Grandmaster), and Peyman Yazdanian (Music Composer). (2)

Today Sharif University has a student population of more than 9000 – of which 700 are pursuing doctrates – and 500 faculty members in 15 disciplines. It carries out a vast majority of the Industry-funded R&D in the country and is consistently ranked as No. 1 University nationally and among 500 top universities (between 250-350) around the world over the last 5 years.

Times Higher Education also ranked Sharif University 1st in the Middle East, 6th in Asia, and 27th in the world in top 100 universities under 50. (6)

However, Sharif was always not this utopia of scientific and technological prowess. It has had its fair share of ups and downs as well.

Ambitious Beginnings

Established in 1966 by Reza Shah Pahlavi – the West-aligned Shah of Iran – as The Aryamehr University of Technology (AMUT) with an idea and effort to steer the Iranian Higher Education Model towards the US tradition. Formed alongside several other schools established in collaboration with Harvard, Georgetown, and Columbia, AMUT was to become the technological powerhouse to drive Iran’s science and industry much like its inspiration, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) had done for America. Much like MIT, it was to provide technical education where interdisciplinary research centers transcended traditional disciplinary departments. (3)

The Shah explained that he wanted an Iranian MIT, not an Iranian Harvard or Princeton, because Iran needed “a problem-solving type of education. (3) The final master plan of the University produced by Arthur D. Little and a number of consultants from the US clearly laid out the vision:

“The main idea in this organization of instruction is to organize the academic activities on the major technological problems of the country instead of the usual disciplines. The reality of the needs of Iranian society and the aspirations for Iran’s accelerated development requires that their educational system should not be a copy of the obsolete aspects of western systems by a lag of twenty years; instead, it must be based on Iranian culture and societal characteristics.”

And, herein lay the important twist.

At the Crossroads of Science and Religion

The Shah appointed Seyyed Hossein Nasr (the first Iranian to graduate from MIT) as AMUT’s chancellor in 1972 with the mandate to create an institution that created and built its own cultural identity within the Persian tradition. Nasr was the ideal man for the job. Having done his undergraduate from MIT in the sciences, he later moved to philosophy and history of science finishing his PhD from Harvard. (5)

As a condition of his acceptance, Nasr asked for the opportunity to develop a vigorous program in Islamic history, philosophy, and culture to complement the engineering training. “What I wanted to do as president of the university,” Nasr explained, “was to create an indigenous technology in Iran, and not simply keep copying from Western technology.” (3)

Nasr’s pioneering effort led Aryamehr to create one of the first graduate programs in the Islamic world in the philosophy of science based upon the Islamic philosophy of science. (5)

In addition, ambitious plans for a collaboration between MIT and AMUT were laid out. Nasr wrote to MIT President Jerome Wiesner (his batch mate from MIT days) and sought formal help and collaboration. (3) Plans were made of creating opportunities for AMUT faculty to take sabbaticals at MIT, for AMUT graduate students to complete their graduate training at MIT, and joint research programs between the two schools.

In a pattern that was to be repeated by US Universities many times over in the Persian Gulf later, MIT agreed to set up research centers at MIT that were ‘supported’ by Iran and supposed to engage in joint R&D with AMUT professors. Energy was high on the agenda in the 197os and Iran agreed to pay towards a $50 million Energy Research Center at MIT. (3) Flushed with oil wealth, Shah went on a buying spree. Plans were also discussed to entertain training in nuclear engineering for certain members (30 each year) of the Iranian Atomic Energy Commission.

Events would soon overtake these ambitious plans.

Politics trumps science trumps politics again

Nasr resigned in 1975 shortly before the overthrow of the Shah’s regime. Having opened their minds of philosophy, history, religion, and culture, AMUT’s students had become deeply engaged in the conversations that preceded and followed the Islamic Revolution in Iran.

Nasr later reminisced on the dilemma he faced:

“Technology is not value free. It brings with it a kind of culture of its own. And so once you get into it on a high level you can become very easily alienated from your own culture and that creates a breeding ground for the worst kind of political activity. And that was also one of the reasons why the Shah paid so much attention to the new university. He said we must do everything possible to have our own scientists and engineering, to create our own technology, without this social and political explosion.”

After the revolution, a vast majority of the professors left AMUT – many went to the United States. The government of the Islamic Republic renamed the AMUT Sharif University after a Martyr of the revolution. It also separated the campus in Isfahan to create the Isfahan University of Technology. Gradually some of those who had left or were studying abroad at the time of the revolution returned – motivated to serve the revolution. (3)

While politics remained, though in a somewhat mellowed form, Sharif University has gradually become the kind of scientific and technological powerhouse that was the Shah’s vision. But it also became a lot more. As home to Iran’s best and brightest it also became a powerhouse of political ideas and the revolutionary ideology. Today, being a Sharif student is not only ones ticket abroad to the best Universities of Stanford, MIT, and Oxford but also to the corridors of power in Tehran as a substantial number of the student political leaders trained at Sharif gradually make their way to the very top of the echelons of power in Iran.

Iran’s dream of creating an MIT has been redeemed in both intended and unintended ways.

References:

1. http://www.newsweek.com/surprising-success-irans-universities-87853
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharif_University_of_Technology
3. http://www.cse.iitd.ernet.in/~arindamp/files/MIT.pdf
4. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/05/AR2008060503904.html
5. About Nasr: http://www.nasrfoundation.org/bios.html
6. http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2014/one-hundred-under-fifty

The term ‘petrodollars’ may simply mean money earned from the sale of oil, but that it is not all that it implies. It is a loaded and political term used almost always in reference to Middle Eastern oil producers and often suggests quick and maybe even undeserved returns without thought to long-term impact.

So it would come as a surprise to many, when that very same denigrated wealth – the petrodollar – is being invested in the clean energy and sustainability-focused innovation, that humanity needs to overcome the challenges posed by climate change. And by the oil producing Arab states, no less.

But that is what is being witnessed in parts of the Arab Gulf – large scale ‘petrodollar-funded’ investment in research and development in an area that in essence, aims to one day put the petrol industry out of business.

Clean energy initiatives in the Gulf

Energy initiatives

In 2006, the United Arab Emirates established the Masdar Initiative, to invest in renewable energy and clean technology, and today it has three business units and an independent post-graduate research institute under its umbrella, to further its goals. It’s Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, in particular, has the objective of evolving collaborative research and development capability in advanced energy and sustainability.

Across the border in Saudi Arabia, the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology was founded in 2009, with the largest endowment ever witnessed for a university – $20 billion. It too, has a goal of producing new innovative technology and high-value human capital, with its Solar and Photovoltaic Engineering Research Center in particular focusing on renewable energy technologies.

Nearby, the Qatar Foundation established the Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute in 2011, to conduct and coordinate research that addresses energy and environmental issues, while the Qatar Science and Technology Park, aims to serve as a business hub and incubator for related industries.

The Middle East and North Africa solar power sector alone, could see investments up to $50 billion by 2020, the Middle East Solar Industry Association and Meed Insights MENA Solar Energy Report estimated. Considering that these three countries jointly are only about the size of Algeria with combined population of less than 40 million, that is a lot of renewable-energy focused investment.

Economic pragmatism at work

There are sound reasons for it. A major reason is pragmatism: the oil and gas that has provided the major portion of the national wealth for these states, will run out eventually. Saudi Arabia, believed to have the second largest oil reserve in the world, may run out of oil as early as 2030, according to a report from Citigroup in 2012. What does an economy that was powered by ‘petrodollars’ do when it has no more petrol to sell? If it does not have other high-value products and services to offer the global market, the simple answer is, it shrinks. Rather than see their economic development falter, forward-thinking Gulf States are investing today in alternative products, to continue to fuel their economic engines tomorrow.

Yet, why pick sustainable energy and clean technologies for economic diversification? Because it makes good economic sense. While there may be lower hanging fruits – industries that are less risky with stable returns– no sector offers as large of potential profit and caters to so massive a global market as sustainable energy. Energy is a product that every government and every industry needs in secure and affordable supply. The Gulf States are hoping to be among those, who can provide that through alternative energy technologies, and reap the resulting rewards. “You’re seeing countries like UAE make substantial investments in renewables because they realize that clean energy is going to be one of the largest growth industries of the 21st century,” Amit Ronen, the director of the George Washington University Solar Institute, told Aljazeera news.

An opportunity to create science and technology for the future

Petro-Dollars

But the most dynamic and compelling reason behind the why Arab petrodollars are funding renewable energy and clean technology, is opportunity. Research and development (R&D) in technology, is an expensive undertaking, particularly that, which looks to bring about massive shift changes and innovation. In this post-global recession reality, fewer governments have the available financial resources to invest in the costly and high-risk realm of advanced sustainable technologies and clean renewable energy.

The US – long time global R&D investment leader – will only be increasing federal R&D funding by 1.2 percent in 2015 (White House Office for Science and Technology Policy, 2014), with an overall decreasing trend in R&D investment as a percent of GDP, estimated at 2.77 in 2011 (World Bank). Europe is similarly flagging; the UK R&D spending overall fell 3% while the rest of the European Union invests a mere 2.06% of its GDP in R&D (Office for National Statistics, 2014).

“Where the west has retrenched, Asia has advanced,” the Batelle 2014 Global R&D Funding Investment report states. While Japan has been the historic Asian R&D giant, China has been gaining ground, and is expected to surpass US R&D funding by about 2022 (Martin Grueber, 2013). It is in that shifting balance, that the Gulf States are carving out their position today with their renewable energy and clean technology focused R&D investment. By leveraging their financial reserves, they are developing the new technology, systems and highly-trained human capital that world will need in the energy-constrained, climate change-beset future, securing for themselves and their people a continuing source of prosperity.

With the strength of these motivations and the breadth of the investment and support for renewable energy and advanced sustainable technologies in the Arab Gulf, the coming decades will serve to be the proving period for this bold new economic experiment.

Given the growing severity of climate change impacts, the world already needs green innovation, petrodollar funded or otherwise. If the revenue gained from fossil fuel sales can be used to help mitigate their impact on the environment, all the better.

Zarina Khan is a Massachusetts Institute of Technology Knight Science Journalism Fellow working in science communication in the United Arab Emirates.