Category: Blog

Call for Speakers!

Are you an academic or a professional who is going to travel to Iran to visit the family?

Why not sharing your knowledge and expertise with others in Iran too?

Why not meeting new people, and expanding your professional network?

We can help you by arranging a seminar for you in Iran. If you are interested to be the next speaker, please contact us by filling this form.

Iran’s National Elites Foundation (NEF) provides different grants for non-resident Iranian scientists and professionals in order to support knowledge transfer to Iran.The grants are available under different programs such as “Post-doctoral Fellowship”, “Sabbatical Program”, “Collaboration Opportunities for Adjunct Professors”, etc. For the list of programs, please visit this link.

Travel grant that supports lectures and workshops is one of the grants available from NEF. Here is more information about this grant and the application process.

• Applicant is a non-resident Iranian scientist or professional who has either outstanding work experience in a reputable company or has received his/her PhD or post-doctroal fellowship in one of the top 400 world universities according to QS World University Rankings. Applicants who are close to finishing their PhD are also eligible.
• Iran’s National Elites Foundation (NEF) is a public organization with a board of trustees where its president is Iran’s Vice President for Science and Technology.

Application Process:

1. The applicant creates an account in  international.bmn.ir
2. The applicant selects the funding program he/she wants to apply to.
3. The applicant selects the area of specialty.
4. The applicant can select up to three Partner Institutions.
   1. The International Institute for Future Knowledge Development of Iranians (IranKnowledge) is one of the Partner Institutions that works closely with our organization. They are not the host but can facilitate finding the right host for you. Feel free to select them as the Partner Institution.
5. The applicant enters other information including CV, research proposal, lecture summary, etc.
6. NEF would review the applicant profile and informs the applicant within 2-3 working days about his/her general eligibility.
7. Once approved by NEF, the Partner Institution would review the applicant’s request, and respond in around 2 weeks time.
8. The Partner Institution will find a host faculty member, and connect him/her to the applicant.+
   1. If the applicant introduces a host faculty member, it expedites the process.
9. The applicant will arrange with the Partner Institution on how to receive the grant money. The Partner Institution usually requires applicant’s bank account to Iran, and will deposit the money to that bank account. The applicant needs to provide some other documents such as copy of passport, and the flight ticket.
10. If your Partner Institution is IranKnowledge and applicant does not have a bank account in Iran, he or she can make a request that the money be transferred to a relative’s bank account.
11. The grant money depends on the one-way flight travel time. It is 3 million Tomans for travel time less than 4 hours, 4 million Tomans for travel time between 4 and 8 hours, and 5 million Tomans, and 5 million Tomans for travel time more than 8 hours.

By Mohammad Amin Sadeghi, PhD. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The idea of Winter Seminar Series was first proposed by Sepideh Mahabadi in 2015. She was an IOI Gold Medalist and a PhD student at MIT.  In the summer of 2015 she was visiting UIUC.  She had observed that a significant fraction of Iranian academics in the US, visit Iran in winter holidays and are happy to present their latest work.  She observed that Iranian students were also interested to hear the latest research news in top universities.  What was missing, was an organized conference to connect the two groups.

In the summer of 2015, she organized a group of Iranian PhD students who study in the US.  I was delighted to be part of this group.  We gathered a database of 200 top Iranian academics in computer science globally.  We contacted them and selected about 25 who were planning to visit Iran in the following winter.  We scheduled lectures and coordinated with the guests.  Sharif SSC helped with preparing the venue and 250 students registered.

Second year, WSS-2016 received even more attention and was held as a larger event. Organizers at WSS-2016 did a great job of organizing the event.  I thank all of the organizers and the speakers and I wish best of luck for the organizers of WSS-2017. We need more of these events in universities other than Sharif and in areas other than computer science.

After organizing many seminars in Iran, Knowledge Diffusion Network (KnowDiff) is proud to announce its new program, mini-workshops in Iran.

Here is how it works:

• You should have a team of two to three speakers.
• At least one speaker should be a faculty member.
• We encourage you to invite a faculty member from Iran to be one of your speakers. If you don’t know anyone, we can help you find one.
• You and other speakers are in charge of developing the agenda.
• The duration of the workshop is half-a-day to a full day.
• KnowDiff can support the promotion, registration and administration of the workshop.
• There are limited funding available to support travel expenses of the speakers.

If you are interested, please complete this form, and we will contact you soon for further arrangement.

We are getting close to 12 years anniversary of KnowDiff (and its website too!). Since the beginning, our website has gone through many changes, but most of them minor and cosmetic. We are very glad that we are finally bringing a new design to our website. Not only our website looks more up-to-date, we are also revamping many of its features. We hope that you are now able to find the information in our website easier than before. Please share with us your feedback about this new design.