The second national steel festival and exhibition of Iran was held this morning at the conference hall of Milad Tower in the presence of Sorena Sattari, the vice president for science and technology affairs.

The vice president for science and technology affairs started his speech by expressing his condolences for the latest incidents, stating: dealing with these incidents is hard, but life is a fight and we must stand on our feet with all power and do well in the society.

Sattari mentioned that there are two definitions of factory and industry that are different in terms of intellectual infrastructures, adding: the factory is where we bring our production line from overseas and the product is manufactured. However, this product needs no university or student. For this type of factories, we only need to train technicians. This type of thinking must be forgotten if we want to have a relationship between industry and university since industry needs university and designing and machine producing occur at this place.

The vice president for science and technology affairs continued: on the one hand, some expectations of the universities are not fundamental because the product comes from private-sector investment in research. The government should only modify the research infrastructure. Academic research, then, does not work with government money. These are the companies that make the product.

Booming of Innovation Ecosystem

The president of the knowledge-based economy and culture-building technologies development headquarter considered universities as the foundation for development of knowledge-based companies, adding: universities provide the manpower and environment to drive startups to innovate and develop their businesses and make money by selling their companies" products. Use of government money limits the range of achievements of universities. innovation and a great vision will help universities earn revenues by selling technologies and concluding contracts.

In another part of his speech, Sattari mentioned the oil culture, adding: eight years of oil sales destroyed entrepreneurial culture. With the money to sell oil, you cannot buy science and technology and own the industry because technology must be learned.

Serious Determination to Sustain Knowledge-based Economy

 The vice president for science and technology affairs also marked: the oil culture that has been formed in the country must change with the help of everyone. Of course, changing this general culture in a working community is hard but doable. We must all fight for change together, on one side.

Pointing out the great capacities in the country, Sattari added: despite the large number of scholars, universities and university companies, sanctioning of Iran by another country is inappropriate, indicating that we have weaknesses in the industry despite the huge level of progress over the years.

According to Sattari, the steel industry is on the path to changing its culture and a new culture is being formed in the industry. In this respect, he marked: Iran was sanctioned in the field of catalyst last year and this opportunity was made domestically and today there is no need to import this product. This culture has led us to producing proper products in the area of its design and interior design.

According to the report, cooperation agreements were signed between different organizations in the ceremony in the presence of the vice president for science and technology affairs.

This festival is the largest gathering of producers, suppliers, businessmen, and experts of steel in Iran. The event is held January 13^th-16^th, 2019 at Milad Tower.

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