27 projects were selected for the second round of the technology core identification competition in the field of materials engineering and manufacturing. In the end, six top projects were selected.

After the primary screening stage, the in-person judgment stage of the competition was held during December 14th-15th, 2019.

27 Final Projects

During a two-day process for presenting the projects, 27 projects moved on to the second stage were evaluated in the presence of judges from universities, Iran national science foundation, Iran national innovation fund, private sector representatives, investors and experts at the lasers, photonics, advanced materials and construction technologies development headquarter.

Six Scientific Fields

The areas included recycling and alloying, ceramic and composite, welding and manufacturing, polymer, surface engineering, and 3D printing.

The competition was held with the goal of monitoring and identifying the capacity of research teams and innovative projects at universities and research centers of the country in order to shape technology cores and newly established academic knowledge-based companies in the field of material engineering and construction and supporting their commercialization.

In this respect, judgements were also carried out using the team"s superiority and capability approach and the commercialization plan presented and the opinions and ratings of the referees present at the meeting were obtained through evaluation forms. Then, the results of judgments and scores presented by the team of experts were compared by the working group.

Six Selected Teams

The lasers, photonics, advanced materials and construction technologies development headquarter announced that based on staffing criteria for commercialization and based on the results of judgments and evaluations, six projects were selected as the projects that received the highest scores. Based on judgment results, a design score above 65 (maximum score) was selected and ranked first. Two projects also achieved a score of over 60 and came in second. Moreover, three projects were scored above 55 and placed third.

Awarding Grants

Grant"s support teams are supported by the Photonics, Laser, Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies headquarters. The winning teams received supportive grants from the headquarter, which is provided for the commercialization in exchange for producing a specific product. Selected projects are twice the number that were to be supported as first to third rank. In addition, in order to valuate the efforts and activities of teams that have the potential to commercialize their products but have failed to achieve the required score in the competition, these teams can benefit from other supportive programs of the headquarter.

The innovative teams that are not selected in the final stage will be supported by the accelerators cooperating with the Vice-Presidency if not selected in the final stage.

A report by the public relations and information center of the Vice-Presidency for science and technology affairs