On Monday, June 26, a representative delegation of the Islamic Republic of Iran headed by Deputy Head of the Iranian Space Agency Mojtaba Abolghasemi Najaf Abadi paid a working visit to Samara University. During the meeting attended by representatives of the Samara region government, the Iranian delegation was introduced to the educational potential of the university in the field of aerospace technology.

The Iranian delegation was welcomed by Sergey Tishin, Deputy Minister – Head of the Department of Machine Building Complex of the Ministry of Industry of the Samara Region. “We are very happy to welcome you in the Samara region. I am confident that in the current political environment, cooperation with Iran will reach a new stage of development,” he told the guests, and briefly presented the economic potential of the region. “Samara Region’s industry consists of enterprises in a wide range of sectors, including aircraft and rocket construction, petrochemicals, automobile manufacturing, machine-tool construction, metalworking, and electronic systems. We look forward to collaborating on each of them.”

The region is also developing a logistics project, being an extensive transportation hub convenient for all modes of transport: there are river ports, a railway junction, the M5 federal highway, airfields, and a bridge across the Volga River is under construction near Klimovka, which will become part of an international transport corridor to Western China.

Vladimir Bogatyrev, Rector of Samara University, added that the region also has a cluster of aerospace enterprises, for which the University has been training personnel for more than 80 years: “Today the university has more than 16 thousand students, and almost a thousand of them are international students from 71 countries. For international students we have programs in both Russian and English. Also, foreigners can study at the University’s postgraduate school and defend a thesis for a PhD degree.”

“I am very pleased to meet my Russian colleagues, thank you for the warm welcome,” Mojtaba Abolghasemi Najaf Abadi replied. “In 2022, we signed cooperation agreements with Roscosmos State Corporation and our relations have started to develop at a fast pace. We would like to build relations with the Samara region, Samara University. We hope that our joint work will open a new era of cooperation between Iran and Samara region.”

At the meeting, the Iranian delegation expressed particular interest in educational programs in the field of space exploration for students and experienced specialists. The rector explained that Samara University has four-year bachelor’s programs and two-year master’s programs. There are also shorter educational programs developed according to the standards of the UN Committee on Outer Space and implemented in English – they last for 9 months. Recently, a group of engineers from Myanmar Space Centre successfully completed such a program – during 9 months the specialists mastered new knowledge under the professional retraining program “Fundamentals of Satellite and Navigation Technologies: Towards the Moon.”

Representatives of the Iranian delegation inquired about specific professional retraining programs implemented at the University. Ivan Tkachenko, Director of the Institute of Aviation and Space-Rocket Engineering of the University explained that the University offers the following programs in this area: a one-week retraining program “Introduction to Nanosatellite Technology,” a two-week program “Fundamentals of Nanosatellite Technology,” a one-month program “Applied Nanosatellite Technologies,” and two nine-month programs – “Perspective Space Technology and Experiments in Space” and “GNSS receivers. Hardware and Software.” Ivan Tkachenko also said that the University can also develop individual educational programs in the interests of foreign partners from friendly countries.

At the end of the visit, the parties expressed their intention to develop a “roadmap” (list of activities) in the framework of cooperation between the space agency of the Republic and the Samara University.