100 Iranian universities receive global recognition in AI research

One hundred universities in Iran have been ranked among the world’s best institutions for Artificial Intelligence. The rating was made by Edurank, an independent university analytics platform, based on the research performance of the universities.

The rankings were based on 252 million citations from 13.4 million academic papers from 5,743 universities across the globe. These citations were then modified according to the release date and incorporated into the final ranking.

Top Iranian universities secure top positions

The University of Tehran is the leading university in this regard in Iran and ranked 56th in Asia and 201st globally for the study of AI. This achievement proves the university’s research output and the university’s status as one of the leading institutions in the region.

Amirkabir University of Technology closely follows, standing at 70th in Asia and 266th in the world. The Iran University of Science and Technology comes in third place in the country, being ranked 83rd in Asia and 318th globally. 

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Globally, Edurank 2024 ranks Stanford University, the University of California Berkeley, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as the top three universities for AI research. Iran is second to Turkey in the fields of AI, machine learning, and robotics in the Islamic world, which underlines the country’s input to these areas. From 2013-2022, Iran published 2,638 AI documents and remains the most active Islamic country in this field. Globally, Iran is ranked 14th in terms of AI research papers.

Iran advances in multiple tech fields

Besides AI, Iran is known to be among the leading countries in the development of numerous technologies. The country has been ranked second in both 3D printing and robotics, fourth in IoT, fifth in 5G communications technology and big data, seventh in drone technology, and eighth in Blockchain technology within the Islamic world. 

In recent years, Tehran University, Tabriz University, and Amirkabir University of Technology have been at the forefront of AI research. The output of scientific articles in the area of AI has risen from 157 in 2018 to 577 in 2022, indicating an upward trend. Robotics and IoT are the second and the third most productive fields, with 1,596 and 1,270 documents, respectively, while the least active field is blockchain, with only seven documents. 

Recently, Iran officially opened the National Artificial Intelligence Center, and acting president Mohammad Mokhber was in attendance. This came after the late President Ebrahim Raisi signed an executive order to create the National Steering Committee and the National Artificial Intelligence (AI) Center. According to the center’s website, it seeks to establish a complete and sustainable path from ideas to market in AI, apply AI for economic growth, set a vision for the world’s top AI country, and find and cultivate talents in this area.