Dr. Mojtahedi's Innovation Award: SUTA is inviting researchers of Sharif University to take part in the competition. Details can be found in the announcement here. Also the form to be completed for nominees is included here.

Dear members,

it is with great pleasure to announce to the membership that the bi-annual SUTA awards will be held for the fourth time in conjunction with the 2016 SUTA Reunion. These awards will be given in four categories as follows:

1.       Dr. Mojtahedi’s Innovation Award to recognize the best research conducted in every department of Sharif University of Technology.

2.       Dr. Amin’s Lifetime Achievement Award to recognize a scholar with outstanding contribution to the university.

3.       Alumni Achievement Award to recognize an alumnus with outstanding achievement in industry or academia.

4.       Staff and Alumni Service Award to recognize an alumnus or university staff with outstanding service to the university, SUTA, or the society (This award is formed as a combination of the Alumni Distinguished Service Award and the Staff Appreciation Award).

In cooperation with the university, SUTA is reviving Dr. Mojtahedi’s innovation award which was dormant after its inception in 2010. For the other three categories, as usual, we are soliciting input from SUTA membership. We would like to encourage our members to inform us of their nominations for these awards by October 31, 2015. The nominations must be sent to awards@suta.org and should include a short biography of the candidate and an explanation to justify the candidacy.

 

For further information about the awards and its past recipients, we invite members to visit SUTA web-site and read Dr. Jalil Kamali’s article in SUTA Newsletter No. 77.

 

 

Best Regards

SUTA Awards Committee

SUTA Board of Directors eagerly seeks your opinion about SUTA activities and how we can enhance the quality of services provided to our members. Moreover, if you have attended or intended to attend SUTA Reunion 2014 in Milan, Italy, your feedback would significantly help us improving the quality of Reunion 2016. Even though, you are welcome to provide anonymous feedback, we strongly recommend you to provide your name and contact information, so as to better use your experiences and opinions Please follow the link below and complete the short survey! It would be great if you fill it out at your earliest convenience  https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1hL6rNd8jNpr1KPEJAOtOFqEBWqat3_cPzIq0Nhbzyg0/viewform?usp=send_form

SUTA has raised its concern on the new policy taken by University of Massachusetts in prohibiting Iranian students to get admitted in  graduate studies. We have sent the following letter to University Presidents.

                                                                                                                 February 16, 2015

Dr. Robert L. Caret,

President of the University of Massachusetts,

Dr. Kumble R. Subbaswamy,

Chancellor UMASS Amherst,

Dr. John J. McCarthy, 

Dean of UMASS Graduate School

Dear Sirs,

On behalf of Sharif University of Technology Association (SUTA), I am writing you to express our concern about University of Massachusetts Amherst’s new policy on prohibiting the admittance of Iranian students for Science and Technology studies.

In the last 10 years, several US institutions such as IEEE and American Chemical Society have introduced restrictions on membership and publication by Iranians, with the argument to comply with the U.S. sanction laws, but they subsequently removed these restrictions, due to pressure from their own members, and reconsideration of U.S. sanction laws. We believe no US academic institution has been fined for accepting Iranian students until now.

Iranian scholars in general, and graduates of Sharif University of Technologies in particular have been very instrumental in the development and advancement of US academic programs around the nation. Moreover, U.S administrations have always stressed on the improvement of cultural relations among the two nations, particularly through academic relations.

Even with the current U.S Sanctions against Iran, We believe that the measure taken by UMass is an extreme interpretation of U.S. Sanction law. The emphasis of many U.S officials on more rigorous cultural exchange among two nations is a sign of how U.S sanctions on Iran is targeted on particular areas, and should not be extended to any cultural and academic relations among nationals of two countries.

We hope the values of academic and cultural relations would prevail and UMass Amherst would reconsider its decision.

Masoud Olfat, Ph.D.

President of Sharif University Association (SUTA)

Masoud.olfat@SUTA.org,               

Hand over to the new board

The 2014 SUTA election results were released by the Supervisory Committee last week and on January 21, 2015, at a common meeting of the 7th and the 8th boards, the management of SUTA has been handed over to the newly elected board. Furthermore, till their next meeting, where they will choose the permanent president, secretary, VP and treasurer, the newly elected board has assigned Dr. Masoud Olfat as interim president, and Ms. Bahar Abghari, as the interim secretary. The combination of the newly elected board is as follows:

1. Masoud Olfat: interim president
   
2. Bahar Abghari: interim secretary
   
3. Shariar Makarechi
   
4. Nastaran Zamani
   
5. Davood Navaian
   
6. Sepehr Hamzelouia
   
7. Mohammadreza Kianmehr
   
8. Shayan Ghotbi: substitute member
   
9. Mohammad Mahmoodi: substitute member
   

From the 7th board, Dr. Bahram Zahir, Ms. Negin Sadr, Dr. Masoud Olfat, Dr. Vahid Arbab and Ms. Nahid Toosi were present and they shared their experience with the new board. The new board can be reached at "board@suta.org".

The Toronto Chapter had an event on January 15, 2015, with Dr. Davar Boghaei as the speaker. The talk entitled "Basic Sciences in Emerging Technologies."

Dr. Boghaei has been recognized for his long time service to SUTA, since 2000, as one of the main contact points in Tehran, and helping with the registration of reunion attendees from Iran. We wish him all the bests, and hope that he continues his involvement with our association.

   

Toronto Chapter Execuitive Team

A few months ago Alireza Seyedi, a dear Sharifi friend (EE 1371) and a distinguished researcher at UCF passed away. In recognition of Alireza's impact and his many academic achievements and to celebrate his extraordinarily innovative life, his family and friends with the help of University of Central Florida established Alireza Seyedi Doctoral Research Innovation Endowed Scholarship. Initial fund of $17,365 was raised by family and friends. The fund has a target of $30,000 in order to be self-sustaining. Once the fund meets the minimum eligibility for establishing an endowment account, in accordance with the foundation policy, it will be invested in the UCF Foundation’s endowment long-term investment pool. The donations to this scholarship are eligible for tax deduction in accordance with US IRS regulations.
It makes sense to me that SUTA take the initiative to spread the word in this regard. If you are interested in making donations/ getting more information, please see the following link:http://adadpay.com/2015/01/07/post_726/

As we declared last month, in an effort to clarify some of the definitions and processes in SUTA Bylaws, the 7th SUTA Board of directors has drafted a new amendment (called the Second Amendments) to the Bylaws.

This new amendment includes clarifying the definition of all member categories, the composition of SUTA Board of directors, and chapter relations. These modifications have been discussed in SUTA Reunion 2014 meeting in Milan Italy, and we also received several comments on the proposed changes, since the matter has been discussed with all members.

Hereby, we are presenting the modified amendment to all members:

  New draft of the Second Amendment to SUTA's Bylaws

If you still have comments on this new version, please contact us via this email address: members@suta.org. We will put this Amendments into referendum, along with the election for 8th SUTA Board of directors, from January 4 to 12, 2015.

Best Regards
Board of Directors

We are very pleased to announce that our dear friend and SUTA member, Dr. Behrokh Khoshnevis, from USC, has won one more prestigious recognition. 

Behrokh and two of his colleagues at USC have been inducted into the National Academy of Inventors.

For more news please click here and here.

The Board of Directors would like to congratulate Behrokh for yet another extraordinary accomplishment.

On November 27, 2014, SUTA, in collaboration with ISW and Shenkht Group organized an event at the University of Toronto, with Dr. Reza Moridi, the Ontario minister of research and innovation, and also the higher education, colleges and universities, as the speaker. The talk was entitled "Research in Ontario:" and was followed by many questions from the audience. About 120 members and guests attended this event.

For a more detailed report of this event (in Persian), please click here.

For more pictures of the event, please refer to our Facebook Page.

For accessing the PowerPoint presentation of the event, please click here (the file size is about 12 MB). We thank Dr. Moridi and his staff for providing the deck of slides here.